"I smell ice," said he, with a glance aft at the captain.
"Smell ice!" thought I, with a half look at him, for I believed he was joking. For my part, it was all ice to me—one dense, yelling atmosphere of snow; every flake barbed, and the cold of a bitterness beyond words. He fell a-sniffing again, quickly and vehemently, and stepped to the side, sending a thirsty look into the white blindness ahead, whilst I heard him mutter, "There 's ice close aboard, there 's ice close aboard!" As he spoke the words, there arose a loud and fearful cry from the forecastle.
"Ice right ahead, sir!"
"Ice right ahead, sir!" repeated the chief mate, whipping round upon the captain.
"I see it, sir! I see it, sir!" roared the skipper. "Hard a starboard, men! Hard a starboard for your lives! Over with it!"
The two fellows at the helm sent the spokes flying like the driving-wheel of a locomotive; the long ship, upborne at the instant by a huge Pacific sea, paid off like a creature of instinct, sweeping slowly but surely to port just in time. For right on the starboard bow of us there leapt out into proportions terrible and magnificent, within a musket shot of our rail, an iceberg that looked as big as St. Paul's Cathedral, with stormy roaring of the gale in its ravines and valleys, and the white smoke of the snow revolving about its pinnacles and spires like volumes of steam, and a volcanic noise of mighty seas bursting against its base and recoiling from the adamant of its crystalline sides in acres of foam. We were heading for it at the rate of thirteen miles an hour as neatly as you point the end of a thread into the eye of a needle. In a few minutes we should have been into it, crumbled against it, dissolved upon the white waters about it, and have met a nameless end. Boy as I was, and bitter as was the day, I remember feeling a stir in my hair as I stood watching with open mouth the passage of the mountainous mass close alongside into the pale void astern, whilst the ship trembled again to the blows and thumps of vast blocks of floating ice.
"Ice right ahead, sir!" came the cry again, nor could we clear the jumble of bergs until the dusk had settled down, when we hove-to for the night. No one was hurt, but I suppose no closer shave of the kind ever happened to a ship before.
Again, and this time once more off Cape Horn. It was my third voyage; I was still a midshipman, and in the second mate's watch. I came on deck at midnight and found the ship hove-to, breasting what in this age of steamboats, and, for the matter of that, perhaps in any other age, might be termed a terrific sea. She was making good weather of it—that is to say, she kept her decks dry, but she was diving and rolling most hideously, with such swift headlong shearing of her spars through the gale that the noises up in the blackness aloft were as though the spirits of the inmates of a thousand lunatic asylums had been suddenly enlarged from their bodies and sent yelling into limbo. The wind blew with an unendurable edge in the sting and bite of it. The second mate and I, each with a rope girdling his waist to swing by, stood muffled up to our noses under the lee of a square of canvas seized to the mizzen shrouds. Presently he roared into my ear, "Sort of a night for a pannikin of coffee, eh, Mr. Russell?" "Ay, ay, sir," I replied, and with that, liberating myself from the rope, I clawed my way along the line of the hencoops—the decks sometimes sloping almost up and down to the heavy weatherscendsof the huge black billows,—and descended into the midshipmen's berth. It was not the first time I had made a cup of coffee for myself and the second mate in the middle watch during cold weather. An old nurse who had lived in my family for years had given me an apparatus consisting of a spirit-lamp and a funnel-shaped contrivance of block tin, along with several pounds of very good coffee, and with this I used to keep the second mate and myself supplied with the real luxury of a hot and aromatic drink during wet and frosty watches. The midshipmen's berth was a narrow room down in the 'tween decks, bulkheaded off from the sides, fitted with a double row of bunks, one on top of another, the lower beds being about a foot above the deck. There were five midshipmen all turned in and fast asleep. The others, who were on watch, were clustered under the break of the poop for the shelter there. A lonely one-eyed sort of slush lamp, with sputtering wick and stinking flame, swung wearily from a blackened beam, rendering the darkness but little more than visible. I slung my little cooking apparatus near to it, filled the lamp with spirits of wine, put water and coffee into the funnel, and then set fire to the arrangement. I stood close under it, wrapped from head to foot in gleaming oilskins—looking a very bloated little shape, I don't doubt, from the quantity of clothing I wore under the waterproofs,—waiting for the water to boil. The seas roared in thunder high above the scuttles to the wild and sickening dipping of the ship's side into the trough. The humming of the gale pierced through the decks with the sound of a crowd of bands of music in the distance, all playing together and each one a different tune. The midshipmen snored, and coats and smallclothes hanging from the bunk stanchions wearily swung sprawling out and in, like bodies dangling from gallows in a gale of wind.
All in a moment a sea of unusual weight and fury took the ship and hove her down to the height as you would have thought, of her topgallant rail; the headlong movement sent me sliding to leeward; the forethatch of my sou'wester struck the spirit-lamp; down it poured, in a line of fire upon the deck, where it surged to and fro in a sheet of flame, with the movements of the ship. I was so horribly frightened as to be almost paralysed by the sight of that flickering stretch of yellowish light, sparkling and leaping as it swept under the lower bunks and came racing back again to the bulkhead with the windward incline. I fell to stamping upon it in my sea-boots, little fool that I was, hoping in that way to extinguish it. A purple-faced midshipman occupied one of the lower bunks, and his long nose lay over the edge of it. He opened his eyes, and after looking sleepily for a moment or two at the coating of pale fire rushing from under his bed, he snuffed a bit, and muttering, "Doocid nice smell; burnt brandy, ain't it?" he turned over and went to sleep again with his face the other way.
I was in an agony of consternation, and yet afraid of calling for help lest I should be very roughly manhandled for my carelessness. There was a deal of "raffle" under the bunks—sea-boots, little bundles of clothing, and I know not what else; but thanks to Cape Horn everything was happily as damp as water itself. There was therefore nothing to kindle, nor was there any aperture through which the burning spirit could run below into the hold; so by degrees the flaming stuff consumed itself, and in about ten minutes' time the planks were black again. I went on deck and reported what had happened to the second mate. All he said was "My God!" and instantly ran below to satisfy himself that there was no further danger. I can never recall that little passage of my life without a shudder. There were a hundred and ninety-five souls of us aboard, and had I managed to set the ship on fire that night the doom of every living creature would have been assured, seeing that no boat could have lived an instant in such a sea as was then running.
In a very different climate from that of Cape Horn I came very near to meeting with an extremely ugly end. It was a little business entirely out of the routine of the ordinary ocean dangers, but the memory of it sends a thrill through me to this hour, though it is much past twenty years ago since it happened. I was making my second voyage aboard a small full-rigged ship that had been hired by the Government for the conveyance of troops to the East Indies. I was the only midshipman; the other youngsters consisted of five apprentices. We occupied a deck-house a little forward of the main-hatch. This house was divided by a fore and aft bulkhead; the apprentices lived in the port compartment, the third and fourth mates and myself slung our hammocks on the starboard side. The third mate was a man of good family, aged about twenty-one, a young Hercules in strength, with heavy under-jaws and the low, peculiar brow of the prize-fighter. He had been a midshipman in Smith's service, and was a good and active sailor, very nimble aloft and expert in his work about the ship, but of a sullen, morose disposition, and a heavy drinker whenever the opportunity to get drink presented itself. I think he was regarded by all hands as a little touched, but I was too young to remark in him any oddities which might strike an older observer. He was given to delivering himself of certain dark, wild fancies. I remember he once told me that if he owed a man a grudge he would not scruple to plant himself alongside of him on a yard on a black night and kick the foot-rope from under him when his hands were busy, and so let him go overboard. But this sort of talk I would put down to mere boasting, and indeed I thought nothing of it.
We were in the Indian Ocean, and one evening I sat at supper (as tea, the last meal on board ship, is always called) along with this man and the fourth mate. We fell into some sort of nautical argument, and in the heat of the discussion I said something that caused the third mate to look at me fixedly for a little while, whilst he muttered under his breath, in a kind of half-stifled way, as though his teeth were set. I did not catch the words, but I am quite certain from the fourth mate's manner, that he had heard them, and that he knew what was in the other's mind. I say this because I recollect that very shortly afterwards the fellow rose and walked out on deck with an air about him as if he was willing to give the third mate a chance of being alone with me. It was a mean trick, but then he was a cowardly rogue, and when I afterwards heard that he had been dismissed from the service he had formerly entered for robbing his shipmates of money and tobacco and the humble trifles which sailors carry about with them in their sea-chests I was wicked enough, recalling how he had walked out of that deck-house, leaving me, a little boy, alone with a strong, brutal, crazy third mate, to hope that he might yet prove guilty of larger sins still, for I could not but regard him as a creature that deserved to be hanged. The instant this man stepped through the door the third mate jumped up and closed it. It travelled in grooves, and he whipped it to with a temper which caused the whole structure to echo again to the blow.
"Now, you young—" he exclaimed, turning his bulldog face, white with rage, upon me, yet speaking in a cold voice that was more terrifying to listen to than if he had roared out, "I have you and I mean to punish you," and with that he unclasped his heavy belt, and then clasped it again so as to make a double thong of the leather, and grasped me by the collar.
What my feelings were I am unable to state at this distance of time. I believe I was more astonished than frightened. I could not imagine that this huge creature was in earnest in offering to beat me for what I had said, and yet I was sensible too of an unnatural fire in his eyes—a glow that put an expression of savage exultation into them; and this look of his somehow held me motionless and speechless. He half raised his arm, but a sudden irresolution possessed him, as though my passivity was a check upon his intentions.
"No, no," he exclaimed, after a little, "I'll manage better than this"; and still grasping me by the collar of my jacket he dropped his belt and ran me to the fore end of the compartment, threw me on my back, and knelt upon me. Within reach of his arm, kneeling as he was, were three shelves on which we kept such crockery and cutlery as we owned, along with our slender stores of sugar and flour and the cold remains of previous repasts. He felt for a knife; I could hear the blades rattle as his fingers groped past his curved wrist for one of them, and then flourishing the black-handled weapon in front of my eyes he exclaimed, "Now I'm going to murder you." I lay stock-still; I never uttered a word; I scarcely breathed indeed. Again, I say that I do not know that I was terrified. My condition was one of semi-stupefaction, I think, with just enough of sense left in me to comprehend that if I uttered the least cry or struggled, no matter how faintly, I should transform him into a wild beast. Nothing but my lying corpse-like under the pressure of his knee saved me, I am certain. My gaze was fixed upon his face, and I see him now staring at me with his little eyes on fire, and the knife poised ready to plunge. This posture maybe he retained for two or three minutes; it ran into long hours to me. Then on a sudden he threw the knife away backwards over his shoulder, rose and went to the door, where he stood a little staring at me intently. I continued to lie motionless. He opened the door and passed out, on which I sprang to my feet and fled as nimbly as my legs would carry me to the poop, where I found the chief mate. He was a little Welshman of the name of Thomas, a brother of Ap Thomas, the celebrated harpist, and if he be still alive and these lines should meet his eyes, let him be pleased to know that my memory holds him in cordial respect as the kindest officer and the smartest seaman I ever had the fortune to be shipmates with. To him I related what had happened.
"O—ho," cried he, "attempted murder, hey? Our friend must be taught that we don't allow this sort of thing to happen aboardus."
He gave certain orders and shortly afterwards the third mate was seized and locked up in a spare cabin just under the break of the poop. Two powerful seamen were told off to keep him company. How much the unfortunate man needed this sort of control I could not have imagined but for my hearing that he was locked up and my going to the cabin window that looked on to the quarter deck to take a peep at him if he was visible. He saw me and bounded to the window, bringing his leg-of-mutton fist against it with a blow that crashed the whole plate of glass into splinters. His face was purple, his eyes half out of their sockets. There was froth upon his lips, with such a general distortion of features that it would be impossible to figure a more horrible illustration of madness than his countenance. I bolted as if the devil had been after me, catching just a glimpse of the powerful creature wrestling in the grasp of the two seamen who were dragging him backwards into the gloom of the cabin. Such an escape as this I regard as distinctly more eventful, if not more romantic, than falling overboard and being rescued when almost spent, or being picked up after a fortnight's exposure in an open boat. My most sleep-murdering nightmares nearly always include the phantom form of that burly, crazed third mate kneeling upon my motionless little figure and feeling for a knife on one of the shelves just over my head.
Another little plum out of my plain sailor's pudding. This time my ship was an East Indian trader that whilst lying at Calcutta was chartered by the Government to convey troops to the North of China. It was in 1860. Difficulties had arisen, and John Chinaman was to be attacked. We proceeded to Hong Kong with the headquarters of the 60th Rifles on board, and thence to the Gulf of Peche-li, which I should say submitted one of the finest spectacles in the world, with its congregations of transports and English and French and Yankee ships of war. It was an old-world scene which the sponge of time has obliterated for ever, and I behold again in memory those two noble frigates, theImpérieuseand theChesapeake, straining tightly at their cables, with smoke-stacks too modest in proportions to impair to the critical nautical eye the tack and sheet suggestions of the graceful, exquisitely symmetrical fabric of spars and yards and rigging soaring triumphantly aloft to where the long whip or pennant at the main flickered like a delicate line of fire against the hard cold blue of the Asiatic sky.
We lay for many months in that bay, and were obliged repeatedly to send ashore for fresh meat, vegetables, and the like. On one occasion I recollect going with the mate in the long-boat some distance up the river Peiho, a rushing, turbid stream at the mouth of which the Chinese had fixed a verychevaux-de-friseof spikes, upon which they had fondly hoped our men-of-war would impale themselves, forgetting that the depth of water scarcely permitted the approach of a shallow gunboat. We were returning to the ship with a fair wind, and on top of the fierce rush of the river, when our helmsman run us plump against one of Johnny's huge impalers. The shock of the blow threw the mate into an immense basket of fresh eggs. He fell with a squelch past all power of forgetting, and lay wriggling in a very quagmire of yolk and white and fragments of shells. We pulled him out blind and streaming with eggs. His aspect was so preposterously absurd that the helmsman, rendered almost imbecile by laughter, let the boat drive into a second pile, when, as I live to write it, the mate, who was cleaning himself near to the basket, was thrown a second time into the glutinous mess! I will not attempt to repeat the sea-blessings he bestowed upon the steersman. Happily eggs were cheap, and a dollar might have represented a more considerable smash. Now it was two days following this that the captain sent the long-boat to procure some sheep and poultry from a little village situated close to the shores of the bay on the north of the river. The second mate took charge, and I and another midshipman and a couple of sailors went along with him. We landed and left the boat in charge of a seaman, and strolled towards the village. The second mate was a wild, dissolute young fellow, who, before he quitted China, became the recipient of more than one round dozen by order of the provost-marshal for looting. A little knot of Chinamen stood watching as we approached, whilst just beyond we caught sight of a couple of women hobbling nimbly away out of reach of our sight, as though they walked on stilts. Sherman—for such was the second mate's name,—approaching the Chinamen, began with them in pigeon English. They did not understand. He exhibited a few dollars, and traced the outline of a sheep upon the ground, and, with many surprising motions of his arms, sought to acquaint them with the object of his visit. All to no purpose. "What's to be done?" said Sherman, looking at us. "There's nothing that resembles a sheep hereabouts." His eyes suddenly brightened as they lighted on a large concourse of cocks and hens pecking in tolerably close order at some fifty paces distant from us. "Boys," he shouted, "as these chaps can't be made to understand, let's help ourselves. Each one seize what he can get and make for the boat. Follow me." He sprang with incredible agility towards the fowls, and in a trice had a couple of them shrieking and fluttering in his grasp. In a breath the Chinamen—thirty or forty strong—uttering a long, peculiar shout, armed themselves with pitchforks—at all events, a species of weapon that to my young eyes resembled a pitchfork,—sticks, and stones, and gave chase. They tramped after us with the noise of an army in pursuit. We flew towards the boat, screaming to the fellow in charge to haul in and receive us. A stone struck me in the small of my back, and urged me forwards faster than my legs were travelling. Down I should have tumbled on my nose, and in that posture have been straightway massacred, but for the timely grip of a sailor who was running by my side. "Hold up, my hearty!" he roared, hooking his fingers into the back of my collar and jerking me backwards. In a few moments we gained the boat, wading waist-high to come at her, and rolling like drunken men over her gunwale into her bottom. A volley of stones rattled about our ears, but we were safe. Had the Chinamen carried firearms, not one of us but must have been shot down.
I could relate a score or more of such experiences: of ugly collisions with the police in Calcutta, of a narrow escape of being thrown overboard by a dinghy-wallah of the river Hooghley, of a desperate fight in the slings of the mizzen-topgallant yard with an apprentice of my own age, and the like; but the space at my disposal obliges me to conclude. Very little of the heroic enters the sailor's life. The risks he runs, the adventures he encounters, have, as a rule, nothing of the romantic in them; they are mainly brought about by his own foolhardiness, by the proverbial carelessness that is utterly irreconcilable with the stern obligations of vigilance, alertness, and foresight imposed upon him by the nature of his calling, by the imbecility of shipmates, and much too often by drink. Yet no matter what the cause of most of the perils he meets with, his experiences, I take it, head the march of professional dangers. Small wonder that faith in the "sweet little cherub that sits up aloft" should still linger in the forecastle. For certainly were it not for the bright look-out kept over him by some sort of maritime angel, the mariner would rank foremost as amongst the most perishable of human products.
The Strange Adventures of a South Seaman.
On November 4th, 1830, a number of convicts were indicted at the Admiralty Sessions of the Old Bailey for having on the 5th of September in the previous year piratically seized a brig called theCyprus. A South Seaman was innocently and most involuntarily, as shall be discovered presently, involved in this tragic business, to which he is able to add a narrative that is certainly not known to any of the chroniclers of crime. But first as to the piratical seizure.
TheCyprus, a colonial brig, had been chartered to convey a number of convicts from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour, on the northern coast of Tasmania, and Norfolk Island, distant about a week's sail from Sydney—in those days a penal settlement. There were thirty-two felons in all. These men had been guilty of certain grave offences at Hobart Town, and they had rendered themselves in consequence liable to new punishment; they were tried before the Supreme Court of Judicature there, and sentenced to be transported to the place above mentioned.
Only the very worst sort of prisoners were sent to Norfolk Island and Macquarie Harbour. The discipline at those penal settlements was terrible; the labour that was exacted, heart-breaking. The character of the punishment was well known, and every felon re-sentenced to transportation from the colonial convict settlements very well understood the fate that was before him.
TheCyprussailed from Hobart Town in August, 1829. In addition to the thirty-two convicts, she carried a crew of eight men and a guard of twelve soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant Carew, who was accompanied by his wife and children. The prisoners, as was always customary in convict ships, were under the care of a medical man named Williams.
Nothing of moment happened until the brig either brought up or was hove-to in Research Bay, where Dr. Williams, Lieutenant Carew, the mate of the vessel, a soldier, and a convict named Popjoy went ashore on a fishing excursion. They had not been gone from the ship above half-an-hour when they heard a noise of firearms. Instantly guessing that the convicts had risen, they made a rush for the boat and pulled for the brig. It was as they had feared: the felons had mastered the guard and seized the brig. They suffered no man to come on board save Popjoy, who, however, later on sprang overboard, and swam to the beach. They then sent the crew, soldiers, and passengers ashore, but without provisions and the means of supporting life. Then, amongst themselves, the prisoners lifted the anchor and trimmed sail, and the little brig slipped away out of Research Bay.
The chroniclers state that the vessel was never afterward heard of, though some of the convicts were apprehended, separately, in various parts of Sussex and Essex. The posthumous yarn of the mate of an English whaler disproves this. He relates his extraordinary experience thus:
"We had been fishing north of the Equator, and had filled up with a little 'grease,' as the Yankees term it, round about the Galapagos Islands, but business grew too slack for even a whaleman's patience. Eleven months out from Whitby, and, if my memory fails me not, less than a score of full barrels in our hold! So the Captain made up his mind to try south, and working our way across the Equator, we struck in amongst the Polynesian groups, raising the Southern Cross higher and higher, till we were somewhere about latitude 30 deg., and longitude 175 deg. E.
"I came on deck to the relief at four o'clock one morning: the weather was quiet, a pleasant breeze blowing off the starboard beam; our ship was barque-rigged, with short, topgallant masts—Cape Horn fashion; she was thrusting through it leisurely under topsails and a maintopgallantsail, and the whole Pacific heave so cradled her as she went that she seemed to sleep as she sailed.
"Day broke soon after five, and as the light brightened out I caught sight of a gleam on the edge of the sea. It was as white with the risen sun upon it as an iceberg. I levelled the glass and made out the topmast canvas of a small vessel. There was nothing to excite one in the spectacle of a distant sail. The barque's work went on; the decks were washed down, the look-out aloft hailed and nothing reported, and at seven bells the crew went to breakfast, at which hour we had risen the distant sail with a rapidity that somewhat puzzled the captain and me. For, first of all, she was not so far off now but that we could distinguish the lay of her head. She looked to be going our way, but clearly she was stationary, for theSwan, which was the name of our barque, though as seaworthy an old tub as ever went to leeward on a bowline, was absolutely without legs: nothing more sluggish was ever afloat; forherthen to have overhauled anything that was actually under way would have been marvellous.
"'Something wrong out there, Grainger?' said the captain.
"'Looks to me to be all in the wind with her,' I answered.
"'Make out any colour?' said the captain.
"'Nothing as yet,' said I.
"'Shift your helm by a spoke or two,' said he. 'Meanwhile, I'll go to breakfast.'
"He was not long below. By the time he returned we had risen the distant vessel to the line of her rail. I got some breakfast in the cabin; on passing again through the hatch I found the captain looking at the sail through the telescope.
"'She is a small brig,' said he, 'and she has just sent the English colours aloft with the jack down. She is all in the wind, as you said. Her people don't seem to know what to do with her.'
"She now lay plain enough to the naked sight; a small black brig of about a hundred and eighty tons, apparently in ballast as she floated high on the water. She, like ourselves, carried short topgallantmasts, but the canvas she showed consisted of no more than topsails and courses. I took the glass from the captain, and believed I could make out the heads of two or three people showing above the bulwark rail abaft the mainmast.
"'What's their trouble going to prove?' said the captain.
"'They're waiting for us,' said I. 'They saw us, and put the helm down, and got their little ship in irons instead of backing their topsail yard. No sailor-man there, I doubt.'
"'A small colonial trader, you'll find,' said the captain, 'with a crew of four or five Kanakas. The captain's sick and the mate was accidentally left ashore at the last island.'
"It blew a four-knot breeze—four knots, I mean, for theSwan. Wrinkling the water under her bows, and smoothing into oil a cable's length of wake astern of her, the whaler floated down to the little brig within hailing distance. We saw but two men, and one of them was at the wheel. There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather let me describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor's eye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest old sea-donkey of a collier. Nothing was rightly set for the lack of hauling taut. Running gear was slackly belayed, and swung with the rolling of the little brig like Irish pennants. The craft was clean at the bottom, but uncoppered. She was a round-bowed contrivance, with a spring aft which gave a kind of mulish, kick-up look to the run of her.
"One of the two visible men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in a black coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, and stood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did not offer to hail. I thought this queer; it struck me that he hesitated to hail us, as though wanting the language of the sea in this business of speaking.
"'Brig ahoy!' shouted the captain.
"'Hallo!' answered the man.
"'What is wrong with you?'
"'We are short-handed, sir, and in great distress,' was the answer.
"'What is your ship, and where are you from, and where are you bound to?'
"When these questions were put the man looked round to the fellow who stood at the brig's little wheel. It was certain he was not a sailor, and it was possible he sought for counsel from the helmsman, who was probably a forecastle hand. He turned his face again our way in a minute, and shouted out in a powerful voice:
"'We are the brigCyprus, of Sydney, New South Wales, bound to the Cape of Good Hope, and very much out of our reckoning, I dare say, through the distress we're in.'
"The captain and I exchanged looks.
"'Heading as you go,' the captain sang out, 'you're bound on a true course for the Antarctic Circle, and, anyway, it's a long stretch for Agulhas by way of Cape Horn out of these seas. How can we serve you?'"
'Will you send one of your officers in a boat?' came back the reply very promptly, 'that he may put us in the way of steering a course for the Cape of Good Hope? He'll then guess our plight, and if you'll lend us a hand or two we shall be greatly obliged. We can't send a boat ourselves—we're too few.'
"'He's no sailor-man, that fellow,' said the captain, 'and he ha'n't got the colonial brogue, either. I seem to smell Whitechapel in that chap's speech. Is he a passenger? Why don't he say so? Looks like a play-actor, or a priest. But take a boat, Grainger, and row over and see what you can make of the mess they're in. There's something rather more than out-of-the-way in that job, if I'm not mistaken.'
"A boat was lowered; I entered it, and was rowed across to the brig by three men. No attempt was made to throw us the end of a line, or in any way to help us. The bowman got hold of a chain plate, and I scrambled into the main-chains and so got over the rail, bidding the men shove off and lie clear of the brig, whose rolling was somewhat heavy, owing to her floating like an egg-shell upon the long Pacific heave.
"I glanced along the vessel's decks forward, and saw not a soul. I observed a little caboose, the chimney of which was smoking as though coal had within the past few minutes been thrown into the furnace. I saw but one boat; she stood chocked and lashed abaft the caboose—a clumsy, broad-beamed long-boat, capable of stowing perhaps fifteen or twenty men at a pinch. I also took notice of a pair of davits on the starboard side, past the main rigging; they were empty.
"I stepped up to the heavily-built man who had answered the captain's questions. He received me with a grotesque bow, pinching the brim of his wide straw hat as he bobbed his head. I did not like his looks. He had as hanging a face as ever a malefactor carried. His features were heavy and coarse, his brow low and protruding, his eyes small, black, and restless, and his mouth of the bulldog cast.
"'We're much obliged to you for this visit,' he said. 'Might I ask your name, sir?'
"'My name is Grainger—Mr. James Grainger,' I answered, scarcely wondering at the irregularity of such a question on such an occasion, perceiving clearly now that the fellow was no sailor.
"'What might be your position in that ship, Mr. Grainger?' said the man.
"'I'm mate of her,' said I.
"'Then I suppose you're capable of carrying a ship from place to place by the art of navigation?' he exclaimed.
"'Why, I hope so!' cried I. 'But what is it you want?' and here I looked at the man who was standing at the helm, grasping the spokes in a manner that assured me he was not used to that sort of work; and I was somewhat struck to observe that in some respects he was not unlike the fellow who was addressing me—that is to say, he had quite as hanging a face as his companion, though he wanted the other's breadth and squareness, and ruffian-like set of figure; but his forehead was low, and his eyes black and restless, and he was close-cropped, with some days' growth of beard, as was the case with the other. He was dressed in a bottle-green spencer and trousers of a military cut, and wore one of those caps which in the days I am writing of were the fashion amongst masters and mates.
"'If you don't mind stepping into the cabin,' said the man with whom I was conversing, 'I'll show you a chart, and ask you to pencil out a course for us; and with your leave, sir, I'll tell you over a glass of wine exactly how it's come about that we're too few to carry the brig to her destination unless your captain will kindly help us.'
"'Are you two the only people aboard?' said I.
"'The only people,' he answered.
"Anywhere else, under any other conditions, I might have suspected a treacherous intention in two men with such hanging countenances as this lonely brace owned; but what could I imagine to be afraid of aboard a brig holding two persons only, with the whaler's boat and three men within a few strokes of the oar, and the old barque,Swan, full of livelies, many of them deadly in the art of casting the harpoon, within easy hail?
"The man who invited me below stepped into the companion-way; I followed and descended the short flight of steps. The instant I had gained the bottom of the ladder I knew by the sudden shadow which came into the light that the companion hatch had been closed; this must have been done by the fellow who was standing at the wheel. It was wisely contrived. Assuredly had the way been open, I should have rushed upon deck and sprung overboard: because after descending the steps I beheld five or six men standing in a sort of waiting and listening posture under the skylight. Instantly my left arm was gripped by the man who had asked me to step below, while another fellow, equally powerful, and equally ruffianly in appearance, grasped me by the right arm.
"'Now,' said the first man, 'if you make the least bit of noise or give us any trouble, we'll cut your throat. We don't intend to do you any harm, but we want your services, and you'll have to do what we require without any fuss. If not, you're a dead man.'
"So saying, they threw open the door of a berth, ran me into it, shut the door, and shot the lock. I had been so completely taken by surprise that I was in a manner stunned. I stood in the middle of the cabin just where the fellows had let go of me, staring around, breathing short and fierce, my mind almost a blank. But I quickly rallied my wits. I understood I had been kidnapped; by what sort of people I could not imagine, but beyond question because I understood navigation, as I had told the man. I listened, but heard no noise of voices, nor movements of people in the cabin. Through the planks, overhead, however, came the sound of a rapid tread of feet, accompanied by the thud of coils of rope flung hastily down. The cabin porthole was a middling-sized, circular window. I saw the whaler in it as in a frame. I unscrewed the port, but with no intention to cry out, never doubting for a moment from the looks of the men that they would silence me in some bloody fashion as had been threatened.
"Just as I pulled the port open a voice overhead sang out: 'Get back to your ship, you three men; your mate has consented to stop with us as we're in want of a navigator.'
"'Let him tell us that himself,' said one of my men; 'let him show up.What ha' ye done with him?'
"'Be off,' roared one of the people, in a savage, hurricane note.
"There was a little pause as of astonishment on the part of the boat's crew—I could not see them, the boat lay too far astern,—but after a bit I heard the splash of oars, the boat swept into the sphere of the porthole, and I beheld her making for the barque.
"I was now sensible, however, not only by observing the whaler to recede, but by hearing the streaming and rippling of broken waters along the bends, that the people of the brig had in some fashion trimmed sail and filled upon the vessel. We were under way. The barque slided out of the compass of the porthole, but now I heard her captain's voice coming across the space of water, clear and strong:
"'Brig ahoy! What do you mean by keeping my mate?'
"To this no answer was returned. Again the captain hailed the brig; but owing to the shift in the postures of the two vessels, and to my having nothing but a circular hole to hear through, I could only dimly and imperfectly catch what was shouted. The cries from the whaler grew more and more threadlike. Indeed, I knew the brig must be a very poor sailer if she did not speedily leave theSwanfar astern.
"And now, as I conjectured from the noise of the tread of feet and the hum of voices, the brig on a sudden seemed full of men; not the eight or ten whom I had beheld with my own eyes, but a big ship's company. And the sight of the crowd, I reckoned, as I stood hearkening at the open porthole—amazed, confounded, in the utmost distress of mind—was probably the reason why the captain of theSwanhad not thought proper to send boats to rescue me. Be this as it will I was thunderstruck by the discovery—the discovery of my hearing, and of my capacity as a sailor of interpreting shipboard sounds—that this little brig, which I had supposed tenanted by two men only, had hidden a whole freight of human souls somewhere away in the execution of this diabolical stratagem. What was this vessel? Who were the people on board her? What use did they design to put me to? And when I had served them, what was to be my fate?
"Quite three hours passed, during which I was left unvisited. Sometimes I heard men talking in the cabin; over my head there went a regular swing of heavy feet, a pendulum tread, as of half-a-score of burly ruffians marching abreast, and keeping a look-out all together. The door of my berth was opened at last, and the villain who had seduced me into the brig stepped in.
"'I was sorry,' said he, 'to be obliged to use threats. Threats aren't in our way. We mean no mischief. Quite the contrary; we count upon you handsomely serving us. Come into the cabin, sir, that I may make you known to my mates.'
"His manner was as civil as a fellow with his looks could possibly contrive, and an ugly smile sat upon his face whilst he addressed me, and I observed that he held his great straw hat in his hand, as though to show respect.
"About twenty men were assembled in the cabin. I came to a dead stand on the threshold of the door of the berth, so astounded was I by the sight of all those fellows. I ran my eye swiftly over them; they were variously dressed—some in the attire of seamen, some in such clothes as gentlemen of that period wore, a few in a puzzling sort of military undress. They all had cropped heads, and many were grim with a few days' growth of beard and moustache. They had the felon's look, and there was somehow a suggestion of escaped prisoners in their general bearing. A dark suspicion rushed upon me with the velocity of thought, as I stood on the threshold of the door of the berth for the space of a few heart-beats, gazing at the mob.
"The cabin was a plain, old-fashioned interior. A stout, wide table secured to stanchions ran amidships. Overhead was a skylight. There were a few chairs on either hand the table, and down the cabin on both sides went a length of lockers. Some of the men were smoking. A few sat upon the table with their arms folded; others lounged upon the lockers, and in chairs. They stared like one man at me, whilst I stood looking at them.
"'Is he a navigator, Swallow?' said one of them—a wiry, dark-faced man, who held his head hung, and looked at you by lifting his eyes.
"'Ay, mate of the whaler—James Grainger by name,' answered the fellow who had opened the door of my berth. 'Salute him, bullies. He's the charley-pitcher for to handle this butter-box.'
"The voices of the men swelled into a roar of welcomes of as many sorts as there were speakers. One of them came round the table and shook me by the hand.
"'My name's Alexander Stevenson,' said he; 'come and sit you down here.'
"All very civilly he conducted me to a chair at the head of the table. And now, happening to glance upwards, I spied seven or eight faces peering down at me through the skylight.
"'Swallow, do the jawing, will 'ee?' said the man who called himselfStevenson.
"'Why, yes,' answered Swallow, posting himself at the top of the table, and addressing me through the double ranks of men on either side. 'This is how it stands with us, Mr. Grainger—clear as mud in a wineglass; and we're sorry it should have come to it, for your sake. But do your duty by us faithfully, and we'll take care you sha'n't suffer. We're thirty-one convicts in all. We were thirty-two, but Milkliver Poppy took a header, and went for the land and the lickspittle; if he lives he'll get his liberty for a reward. We were bound from Hobart to Norfolk Island. You'll have heard of that settlement?'
"I said 'Yes,' and an odd guttural laugh broke from some of the men.
"'Well, mister,' continued the man Swallow, 'Norfolk Island was a destination that didn't accord with our views. And what more d' ye want me to say? Here we are, and we want our liberty, and we mean to get it without any risk, and you're the man to help us.'
"'What do you want me to do?' said I, speaking boldly, and looking about me steadily, for now I perceived exactly how it was with the brig, and the worst had been explained and the whole mystery solved when Swallow told me they were convicts; and likewise I had plenty of time to screw my nerves up.
"Several men spoke at once on my asking the above question. Stevenson roared out: 'Let Swallow man the jaw tackle, boys. One at a time, or you'll addle the gent.'
"'This is what we want you to do,' said Swallow. 'There are scores of islands in these seas, and we want you to carry us to them; heaving-to off them one after another that we may pick and choose, some going ashore here, and some there, for our game is to scatter. That's clear, I hope.'
"'I understand you,' said I."
"Swallow seemed at a loss. Stevenson then said: 'But we shall want nothing that's got a white settlement on it; nothing that's likely to have a pennant flying near. We've got no fixed notions. We leave it to you to raise the islands, and it'll be for us to select and take our chance.'
"'There'll be charts aboard, I suppose?' said I.
"Instantly one of them stepped into a cabin and returned with a bag full of charts. I turned them out upon the table and promptly came across charts of the North and South Pacific oceans. These charts gave me from the Philippines to Cape St. Lucas, and from the Eastern Australian coast to away as far as 120 deg. W. longitude. The men did not utter a word whilst I looked; I could hear their deep breathing, mingled with the noise of a hard sucking of pipes. One of them who looked through the skylight called down. Swallow silenced him with a gesture of his fist.
"'Have you got what's wanted here, Mr. Grainger?' said Stevenson.
"'All that I shall want is here,' I answered.
"'A low growl of applause ran through the men.
"'Will you be able to light upon the islands that'll prove suitable for us men to live on without risk until the opportunity comes in the shape of vessels for us to get away?' said Swallow.
"'I'll do my best for you,' said I. 'I see your wants, and you may trust me, providing I may trust you. What's to become of me when you're out of the brig? That's it!'
"'You'll stay on board and do what you like with the vessel,' answered Swallow. 'She'll be yours to have and hold. Make what you call a salvage job of it, and your pickings, mister, 'ull be out and away beyond the value of what we've been obliged to make you leave behind you.'
"'Ain't that fair?' said a man.
"'Is my life safe?' said I.
"'Ay,' cried the Swallow, with a great oath, striking the table a heavy blow with his clenched fist. 'Understand this and comfort yourself. There's been no blood shed in this job, and there'll be none, so help me God—you permitting, mister.'
"When this was said, a fellow, whom I afterwards heard called by the name of Jim Davies, asked if I was willing to take an oath that I would be honest. I said, 'Yes.' He stood up and dictated an oath full of blasphemy, shocking with imprecations, and grossly illiterate. The eyes of the crowd fastened upon me, and some of the ruffians watched me in a scowling way with faces dark with suspicion, till I repeated the horrid language of the man Davies, and swore, after which the greater bulk of them went on deck.
"Swallow put some beef and biscuit on the table and a bottle of rum, and bade me fall to. He told me to understand that I was captain of the ship; that I was at liberty to appoint officers under me; and that, though none of the convicts had been seafaring men, they had learnt how the ropes led and how to furl canvas, and would obey any orders for the common good which I might deliver. I ate and drank, being determined to put the best face I could on this extraordinary business, and asked for the captain's cabin, that I might find out what nautical instruments the brig carried. Swallow, Stevenson, and a convict named William Watts conducted me to a berth right aft on the starboard side. They told me it had been occupied by the captain, and should be mine. Here I found all I needed in the shape of navigating instruments, and went on deck with Swallow and the others.
"I could see nothing of theSwan; she was out of sight from the elevation of the brig's bulwarks. All the convicts were on deck, and the brig looked full of men. Those who had been above whilst I was in the cabin with the others, approached and stared at me, but not insolently—merely with curiosity. They seemed a vile lot, one and all. With some of them every other word was an oath; their talk was almost gibberish to my ears with thieves' slang. I wondered to find not one of them dressed in felon's garb; but on reflection I concluded that they had plundered the crew and the people who had had charge of them and of theCyprus, and had forced all those they drove out of the brig to change clothes before quitting the vessel.
"However, it was my immediate policy to prove my sincerity. I valued my life, and I had but to look at the men to reckon that it would not be worth a rushlight if they suspected I was not doing my best to find them a safe asylum among the islands in the Pacific. Accordingly, I fetched one of the charts, placed it upon the skylight, where those who gathered about me could see it, and laid off a course for the Tonga Islands; telling the men as I pointed to the group upon the chart that if no island thereabouts satisfied them, we could head for the Fijis or cruise about the Friendly or Navigator groups, working our way as far as the Low Archipelago, betwixt which and the first island we sighted we ought certainly to fall in with the sort of hiding-place they wanted. My words raised a grin of satisfaction in every face within reach of my voice.
"I stepped to the helm and headed the brig on a northerly course, and stood awhile looking at the compass to satisfy myself that the convict who grasped the spokes understood what to do with the wheel. He managed fairly well. I then asked Swallow to serve as my chief mate, and Stevenson to act as second, and calling the rest of the felons together, I divided them into two watches. My next step was to crowd the little brig with all the canvas she could spread, and set every stitch of it properly. Thus passed the first day.
"I have no time to enter minutely into what happened till we made a small point of land in the neighbourhood of the Friendly Islands. There was abundance of provisions on board, plenty of fresh water, and a stock of spirits intended for the commandant and soldiers at Macquarie Harbour and Norfolk Island; but though the convicts freely used whatever they found in the brig's hold, never once was there an instance of drunkenness amongst them. I guessed them all to be as desperate a set of miscreants as were ever transported for crime upon crime from a convict establishment; yet they used me very well. Saving their villainous speech, their behaviour was fairly decorous. They sprang to my bidding, sir'd me as though they had been seamen and I their captain, and, indeed, by their behaviour so reassured me that my dread of being butchered vanished, and I carried on the brig as assured of my personal safety—providing I dealt by them honestly—as though I had been on board the oldSwan.
"We sighted several vessels, but, as you may suppose, we had nothing to say to them. Off the first island we came across I hove the brig to; the convicts got the long-boat out, and a dozen of them went ashore to examine and report. Five returned; the remainder had chosen to stay. We made three of the islands; the natives of two of them were threatening, and frightened the convicts back to the brig; the third proved uninhabited—a very gem of an island was this,—and here fifteen convicts went ashore, and thrice the boat went between the island and the brig with provisions and necessaries for their maintenance.
"But it gave me a fortnight of anxious hunting to discover such another island as the remaining convicts considered suitable. This at last we fell in with midway betwixt the Union group and the Marquesas; and here the rest of the felons went ashore, after almost emptying the brig's hold of provisions and the like. They kept the long-boat, and left me alone in the brig. Some of them shook hands with me as they went over the side, and thanked me for having served them so honestly.
"It was in the evening when I was left alone. The sun was setting behind the island, off which a gentle breeze was blowing. My first business was to run the ensign aloft, jack down. I then trimmed sail as best I could with my single pair of hands, and, putting the helm amidships, let the brig blow away south-west, designing to make for one of the Navigator Islands, where I might hope to fall in with assistance, either from the shore or from a vessel. But, shortly after midnight the brig, sailing quietly, grounded upon a coral shoal, fell over on to her bilge, and lay quiet. I was without a boat, and could do nothing but wait for daylight, and pray for a sight of some passing vessel. All next day passed, and nothing showed the wide horizon round; but about nine o'clock that night, the moon shining clearly, I spied a sail down in the south. She drew closer, and proved a little schooner. I hailed her with a desperate voice, and to my joy was answered, and in less than ten minutes she sent a boat and took me aboard."
The South Seaman's narrative ends abruptly here, but it is known that he was conveyed to Honolulu, at which place, strangely enough, theSwantouched after he had been ashore about a week. He at once went on board, related his strange experiences to his captain, and proceeded on his whaling career with the easy indifference of a sailor accustomed to tragic surprises.
The brigCypruswent to pieces on the shoal on which she had grounded. It is on record that of the convicts retaken on their return to England, two were hanged—namely, Watts and Davies; two others, Beveridge and Stevenson, were transported for life to Norfolk Island; and Swallow was sent back to Macquarie Harbour.
The Adventures ofThree Sailors.
Our vessel was a little brig, named theHindoo Merchant, and we sailed on a day in March in the year of our Lord 1857, from Trincomalee bound to Calcutta. The captain, myself, and three sailors were Europeans; the rest of the ship's company, natives. Though we were "flying light" as the term is—that is to say, though there was little more in the ship's hold than ballast, and though she had tolerably nimble heels, for what one might term acountry-wallah—yet the little ship was so bothered with head winds and light airs, and long days of stagnation, that we had been several weeks afloat before we managed to crawl to the Norrad of the Andaman parallels, which yet left a long stretch of waters before us. If this remainder of the ocean was not to be traversed more fleetly than the space we had already measured, then it was certain we should be running short of water many a long while before the Sandheads came within the compass of our horizon, and to provide against the most horrible situation that the crew of a ship can find themselves placed in, we kept a bright look-out for vessels, and within four days managed to speak two; but they had no water to spare, and we pushed on.
But within three days of our speaking the second of the two vessels we sighted a third, a large barque, who at once backed her topsail to our signals, and hailed us to know what we wanted. My captain, Mr. Roger Blow, stood up in the mizzen-rigging and asked for water. They asked how much we needed; Captain Blow responded that whatever they could spare would be a god-send. On this they sung out: "Send a boat with a cask and you shall have what we can afford to part with." Captain Blow then told me to put an eighteen-gallon cask in the port-quarter boat, and go away to the barque with it. "They'll not fill it," said he, "but a half'll be better than a quarter, and a quarter'll be good enough; for we stand to pick up more as we go along."
I had called to two of the English sailors, named Mike Jackson and Thomas Fallows, to get into the boat, when the cask had been placed in her; and when I had entered her the darkeys lowered us; we unhooked and shoved off. There was a pleasant breeze of wind blowing; it blew hot, as though it came straight from the inside of an oven, the door of which had been suddenly opened; the sky had the sort of glazed dimness of the human eye in fever; but right overhead it was of a copperish dazzle where the roasting orb of the sun was. I could not see a speck of cloud anywhere, which rendered what followed the more amazing to my mind for the suddenness of it.
The two vessels at the first of their speaking had been tolerably close together, but some time had been spent in routing up the cask and getting it into the boat, and setting ourselves afloat, so that at the moment of our shoving off—spite of the topsail of each vessel being to the mast—the space had widened between them, till I daresay it covered pretty nearly a mile. The wind was at west-nor'-west, and the barque bore on the lee quarter of theHindoo Merchant. The great heat put a languor into the arms of our two seamen, and the oars rose and fell slowly and weakly. Jackson said to me: "I hope," said he, "they 'll be able to spare us a bite of ship's bread. Our 'n is no better than sawdust, and if it wasn't for the worms in it," said he, "blast me if there 'd be any nutriment in it at all. Them Cingalese ought to ha' moored their island off the Chinese coast. They 'd have grown rich with teaching the Johnnies more tricks than they 're master of, at plundering sailors."
"TheHindoo Merchant'sbread isn't up to much, Fallows," said I, "but this is no atmosphere to talk of bread in. What 's aboard will carry us to the Hooghley. It is water we have to fix our minds on."
We drew alongside of the tall barque, and the master, after looking over the rail, asked me to step aboard and drink a glass with him in his cabin, "for," says he, "this is no part of the ocean to be thirsty in," and he then gave directions for the cask to be got out of the boat, and a drink of rum and water to be handed down to the two seamen.
I stepped into the cabin and the captain put a bottle of brandy and some cold water on the table. He asked me several questions about the brig, and how long we were out, and where we were from, and the like, and one thing leading to another, he happened to mention the town he was born in, which was my native place too—Ashford, in the county of Kent,—and here was now a topic to set us yarning, for I knew some of his friends and he knew some of mine; and the talk seemed to do him so much good, whilst it was so agreeable to me, that neither of us seemed in a hurry to end it. This is the only excuse I can offer for lingering on the barque longer than, as circumstances proved, I ought to have done.
At last I got up and said I must be off, and I thanked him most kindly for the obliging reception of me, and for his goodness in supplying the brig with water, and I gave him Captain Blow's compliments, and desired to know if we could accommodate him in any way in return. He answered "Nothing, nothing," stepping through the hatch as he said it, and an instant after he set up his throat in a cry.
"You 'll have to bear a hand aboard," says he, with a face of astonishment; "look yonder! 'T is rolling down upon your brig like smoke." He pointed to the vessel, and a little way past her I spied a long line of white vapour no higher than Dover cliff as it looked, but as dense as those rocks of chalk too. The sun made steam of it, but if already it was putting a likeness of its own blankness into the sky over it, which seemed to be dying out, as the vapour came along, as the light perishes in a looking-glass upon which you breathe. I ran to the side and saw my boat under the gang-way and the two men in her. The cask was in the stern of the boat. The master of the barque cried out to me: "Will you not stay till that smother clears? You may lose your brig in it." I replied: "No, sir, thank you. I will take my chance. It is more likely I should lose her by remaining here," and with a flourish of the hand I dropped over the side and entered the boat. "Now," cried I, "pull like the devil, men."
They threw their oars over and fell to rowing fiercely; but the barque was not five cables' length astern of us when the first of the white cliff of vapour smote theHindoo Merchant,and she vanished in it like a star in a cloud. There was a fresh breeze of wind behind that line of sweeping thickness, and in places, at the base of the mass of blankness, it would dart out in swift racings of shadow that made one think of the feelers of some gigantic marine spider, probing under its cobweb as though feeling its way along. In a few minutes the cloud drove down over us with a loud whistling of wind, and the water close to the boat's side ran in short, small seas, every head of it hissing; but to within the range of a biscuit toss all was flying, glistening obscurity, with occasional bursts of denser thicknesses which almost hid one end of the boat from the other. It was about six o'clock in the afternoon, and there might be yet another hour of sunshine.
"'Vast rowing!" says I presently, "you may keep the oars over, but there's no good in pulling, short of keeping her head to wind. This is too thick to last."
"Ain't so sure of that," says Fallows, taking a slow look round at the smother, "I 've been in these here seas for two days running in weather arter this pattern."
"Pity we didn't stay aboard the barque," says Jackson.
"A plague on your pities!" I cried. "I know my duty, I believe. Suppose wehadstayed aboard the barque, we stood to be separated from the brig in this breeze and muckiness, and was her skipper by-and-bye going to sail in search of theHindoo Merchant?"
"A gun!" cries Fallows.
"That'll be the brig," says I, catching the dull thud of the explosion of a nine-pounder which theHindoo Merchantcarried on her quarter-deck.
"Seems to me as though it sounded from yonder," says Jackson, looking away over the starboard beam of the boat.
"What have ye there, men?" says I, nodding at a bundle of canvas under the amidship thwart.
"Ship's bread," answered Jackson, with a note of sulkiness in his voice. "It was hove to us on my asking for a bite. She was a liberal barque. The cask's more 'n three-quarters full."
We hung upon our oars listening and waiting. There was a second gun ten minutes after the first had been fired, and that was the last we heard. The report was thin and distant, but whether ahead or astern I could not have guessed by harkening. I kept up my own and endeavoured to inspirit the hearts of the others by saying that this fog which had come down in a moment would end in a moment, that it was all clear sky above with plenty of moonlight for us in the night if it should happen that the sun went down upon us thus, that Captain Blow was not going to lose us and his boat and the cask of fresh water if it was in mortal seamanship to hold a vessel in one situation; but the fellows were not to be cheered, their spirits sank and their faces grew longer as the complexion of the fog told us that the sun was sinking fast, and I own that when it came at last to his setting, and no break in the flying vapour, and a blackness as of ink stealing into it out of the swift tropic dusk, I myself felt horribly dejected, greatly fearing that we had lost the brig for good.
Just before the last of the twilight faded out of the smoke that shrouded us, we lashed both oars together and, attaching them to the boat's painter, threw them overboard and rode to them. Our thirst was now extreme, and to appease it—being without a dipper to drop into the cask—we sank a handkerchief through the bung-hole and wrung it out in the half of a cocoa-nut shell that was in the boat as a baler, and by this means procured a drink, each man. Grateful to God indeed was I that we had fresh water with us. I beat the cask, and gathered by the sound that it was more than half full. Heaven was bountiful too in providing us with biscuit. It had been the luckiest of thoughts on Jackson's part, though he had desired nothing more than to obtain a relish for his own rations of buffalo hump aboard.
I never remember the like of the pitch darkness of that night. There was a moon, pretty nearly a full one if I recollect aright; but had she been shining over the other side of the world it would have been all the same. Her delicate silver beam could not pierce the vapour, and never once did I behold the least glistening of her radiance anywhere. There was a constant noise of wind in the dense thickness, and an incessant seething and crackling of waters running nimbly, so that though we would from time to time bend our ears in the hope of catching the rushing and pouring noise of the sea divided by a ship's stem, we never could hear more than the whistling of the breeze and the lapping of the hurrying little surges. There was a deal of fire in the water, and it came and went in sheets like the reflection of lightning, insomuch that we might have believed ourselves in the heart of an electric storm; but happily the wind never gathered so much weight as to raise a troublesome sea, and though the boat tumbled friskily she kept dry, and there was nothing in her movements to render me uneasy.
I told the two fellows to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and I kept watch till I reckoned it was drawing on to about one o'clock in the morning. Twice or thrice during that long and wretched vigil there seemed a promise of the weather clearing, and I gazed with the yearning of the shipwrecked; but regularly it thickened and blackened down upon us again in blasts like the belchings of a three-decker's broadside. It was a very watery vapour, and I was early wet to the skin.
At about one o'clock, as I calculated, I awoke Jackson, and bade him keep an eager look-out and not to spare his ear in putting it against the night, "for," says I, "there's nothing to be done with the eyes; it's all for the hearing at such a time as this, mate, and what you can't watch for you must listen for; and wake me up to any sound you may hear, that our three throats may hail together. O God," says I, "if it would but thin and show the brig within reach of our shouts!" With that I lay down and was soon fast asleep, being worn out with excitement and grief, and when I awoke it was daylight, for there's but little dawn off the Andamans; the sun in those seas leaps on to the horizon from the night as it were, and flashes it into day in a breath.
It was still thick and troubled weather, but clear to about two miles from the side of the boat. There was very little wind, and a long swell of the colour of lead was running from the southward. The vapour had broken up and lay in masses round about us—long, white twisted folds of it, like powder smoke after a great battle; and to the top of those heaps of thickness the sky sloped in a sort of grey shadow, with a little pencilling here and there of some small livid ring of mist, which looked stirless as though what air there was blew low. There was nothing in sight; we strained our gaze into every quarter but I saw there was nothing to be seen. This smote me to the heart. I had been in my time in several situations of peril at sea, but had never yet experienced the horrors of an open boat amidst a vast waste of waters, such as was this Bay of Bengal with the Andaman Islands some hundreds of miles distant, and a near menace of roasting heat when the wide grey stretch of cloud should have passed away and laid bare the sun's eye of fire. We gazed with melancholy faces one at another.
"What's to be done?" says Fallows, bringing his bloodshot eyes from the sea to my face; "if we had a sail to set we might have a chance."
"There are two oars," said I, "for a mast and a yard, and our shirts must furnish a sail."
"But how are we to head?" says Jackson.
"Right afore the wind, I suppose," says I; "there'll be no ratching with the rags we're going to hoist. Right afore the wind," I says; "and we must trust to God to keep us in view till something heaves in sight—which is pretty well bound to happen I suppose when there comes some wind along."
I opened the canvas parcel, and found a matter of thirty biscuits; all very sweet, good bread. We took each of us a piece, and followed on with a drink, and then went to work to get our oars in. We all three wore shirts, and we stripped them off our backs and cut them to lie open. I had a little circular cushion of stout pins in my pocket, such as a sailor might carry, and with them we brought the squares of the shirts together, and seized the corners to one of the oars by yarns out of an end of painter we cut off, then stepped the other oar, and secured it with another piece of the painter; and now we had a sort of sail, the mere sight of which, even, was a small satisfaction to us, since the shirts being white they must needs make a good mark upon the water, something not to be missed, unless wilfully, by a passing vessel.
The morning passed away, and a little after twelve o'clock the water in the south was darkened by the brushing of a wind, which drove the hovering masses of vapour before it; and presently they had totally disappeared, leaving a sky with rents and yawns of blue in places, and a clear glass-like circle of horizon, upon which, however, there was nothing to be seen. The boat moved slowly before the wind, which blew hot as a desert breeze; I steered, and Jackson and Fallows sat near me, one or the other from time to time getting on to a thwart to take a view of the ocean, under the sharp of his hand.
In this fashion passed the afternoon. The night came with a deal of fire in the water, and a very clear moon floating in lagoons of velvet softness betwixt the clouds. The weather continued quiet; the long swell made a pleasant cradle of the boat, and the night-wind being full of dew, breathed refreshingly upon our hot cheeks; whilst our ears were soothed by the rippling noise of the running waters which seemed to cool the senses, as the breeze did the body.
It was almost a dead calm, however, at daybreak next morning. The atmosphere was close and heavy, and there was a strange strong smell of seaweed, rising off the ocean, which caused me to look narrowly about, with some dim dream of perceiving land, though I should have known there was no land for leagues and leagues.
Whilst we were munching a biscuit, I observed an appearance of steam lifting off the water, at a distance of about half-a-mile on the starboard side of the boat. The vapour came out of the water in the shape of corkscrews, spirally working, and they melted at a height of perhaps ten or fifteen feet. I counted five of these singular emissions. Jackson said that they were fragments of mist, and we might look out for such another thickness as had lost us the brig. Fallows said: "No; that's no mist, mate; that is as good steam as ever blew out of a kettle. Are there places where the water boils in this here ocean?"
As he said these words, an extraordinary thrill passed through the boat, followed by a sound that seemed more like an intellectual sensation than a real noise. What to compare it to I don't know; it was as though it had thundered under the sea. An instant later, up from the part of the water where the corkscrew appearances were, rose a prodigious body of steam. It soared without a sound from the deep; it was balloon-shaped but of mountainous proportions.
"A sea-quake!" roared Jackson. "Stand by for the rollers!"
But no sea followed. I could witness no commotion whatever in the water; the light, long swell flowed placidly into the base of the mass of whiteness, and there was nothing besides visible on the breast of the sea, save the delicate wrinkling of the weak draught of air. Very quickly the vapour thinned as steam does, and as it melted off the surface, it disclosed to our astonished gaze what at first sight seemed to me the fabric of a great ship, but after viewing it for a moment or two, I distinctly made out the form of an old-fashioned hull with the half of much such another hull as she, alongside, both apparently locked together about the bows; and they seemed to be supported by some huge gleaming black platform; but what it was we could not tell.
The three of us drew a deep breath as we surveyed the floating objects. The steam was gone; there they lay plain and bare; it was as though the wand of a magician had touched the white mass and transformed it into the objects we gazed at.
"Down with the sail," says I, "there's something yonder worth looking at."
We got the oars over, and pulled in the direction of the fabrics. As we approached I could scarce credit the evidence of my own sight. The form of one of the vessels was perfect. She was of an antique build, and belonged to a period that I reckoned was full eighty years dead and gone. The other—the half of her I should say—showed a much bluffer bow, and had been a vessel of some burthen. But the wonder was the object on which they rested. This was no more nor less than the body of a great dead whale!
We first needed to lose something of our amazement ere we could reasonably speculate upon what we saw; then how this had happened grew plain to our minds. The two craft, God knows how many long years before, had been in action and foundered in conflict. The smaller vessel—I mean the one that lay whole before us—might have been a privateersman; she had something of a piratical sheer forward, there were no signs of a mast aboard either of them, one had grappled the other to board her I dare say, and they had both gone to the bottom linked. The vessel of which only half remained may have broken her back in settling, and, by-and-bye, the after part of her drifted away, leaving the dead bows still gripped by the dead enemy alongside. But how came the whale there? Well, we three men reasoned it thus, and I don't doubt we were right. At the moment of the sea-quake the whale was stemming steadily towards the two wrecks resting on the bottom. They were lifted by the explosion, which at the same time killed the whale; but the impetus of the vast form slided it to under the lifted keels, where it came to a stand. A dead whale floats, as we know. This whale being dead was bound to rise, and the buoyancy of the immense mass brought the two craft up with it, and there they were, poised by the gleaming surface of the whale, which was depressed by their weight, so that no portion of the head, tail, or fluke was visible.