Chapter Thirteen.“Land Ho!”“Let go the mizzentop-sail halliards, and man the fore staysail down-haul!” shouted out Captain Dinks the moment Mr Meldrum had spoken; and, the helm being put down at the same time, the ship was again brought head to wind, almost sooner than it has taken to describe the operation. However, as it was observed after a little while that the vessel drifted so rapidly to leeward, through the mere force of the wind on her exposed hull and remaining spars, not to speak of the wash of the sea, and thus ran in quite as great danger of colliding with the ice as if she had been going ahead, the fore staysail, reefed into the most attenuated proportions, was set again—so that the ship might be under steerage way and be able to avoid, under judicious control, the numerous small bergs that now hove in sight like miniature islands in every direction, making the navigation perilous in the extreme.As night came on, too, the dangers surrounding theNancy Bellincreased tenfold; for, the wind not only blew with greater strength, but it was accompanied by blinding showers of hail and snow, while a thick fog rose from the freezing water, more like steam than anything else, obscuring everything and preventing the floating ice from being seen until it was immediately under the bows.It was just about the beginning of the second dog-watch at four bells—six o’clock in the evening—that the mist came; so, after a brief consultation with Mr Meldrum, Captain Dinks told the chief mate to call the hands aft.“We are in as tight a hole, McCarthy,” said he, “as the poor old ship was ever placed in, and it will take us all our time to get out of it; so, it’s best to let all the hands know it, that each may do his best for the good of all.”“Aye, aye, sorr,” answered Mr McCarthy; “it’s no sight o’ use beating about the bush when danger’s under weigh. Till ’em the truth, Cap’en, and shame the divil!” Soon afterwards, his ringing voice calling, “all hands ahoy!” was heard forwards.The crew were not long tumbling aft; and, when they had assembled on the main deck, Captain Dinks addressed them from the break of the poop.“Men,” said he, “I’m sorry to say theNancy Bellis in a position of the greatest peril. We are now, after fighting with a cyclone for five days, being carried along by a rising gale into the midst of scattered icebergs, any one of which may knock a hole in the ship; while if we should run upon one of the bigger ones we must go to pieces at once. You know how, throughout the bad weather we’ve had, I have tried, to spare you as much as I could, conveniently with the proper working of the ship, and I’ve always allowed the watches their regular spell below; but to-night, and as long as we are surrounded by the ice, I can’t allow a man off duty! None of us can tell whether theNancy Bellwill be afloat and we alive by morning; so, no single hand must leave the deck without special permission. You may be certain I sha’n’t set the example, and you can now go forwards. I am about to set fresh look-outs, and each man will have his station.”The majority of the crew gave a cheer at this, Ben Boltrope’s lusty voice being conspicuously to the fore; but some, amongst whom was a lazy lout named Bill Moody, who was the chief grumbler in the forecastle, expressed their discontent audibly; saying that they “hadn’t signed articles to be worked like dogs!”Captain Dinks’ ears were pretty sharp, and he heard what was said; so he called the men back.“I know who spoke,” said he, “and I wouldn’t disgrace the rest of the crew by supposing that they share his feelings; but I’ll add this for his benefit, that anybody who may be discontented will find me easy-going enough when I am stroked the right way, but a pretty tough customer when anybody falls athwart my hawse!”While this little incident was taking place, of course, the usual look-out was not neglected, the Norwegian being still aloft in the maintop, with Frank Harness and Mr Adams on the forecastle; but now, extra men were detailed for the duty. Karl Ericksen, called down from the maintop where his range of view had become limited through the increasing darkness and snowstorm, was placed between the knight-heads; a man on each bow; Frank Harness on the fore scuttle; Mr McCarthy and Adams on the port and starboard quarters; and Ben Boltrope at the wheel—Captain Dinks being here, there, and everywhere to see that everybody was on thequi vive, even ascending the mizzen rigging sometimes into the top, to have an outlook from there and try whether his eyes could pierce the misty vapour that hung over the sea by dint of looking down into it.Thenceforward, throughout the weary night, there was little to do save looking out and conning the ship.When a large cake of ice or berg was seen drifting perilously near, or bearing down upon the vessel, the word was passed along the deck from forward to aft and her head turned one way or the other, the yards of the mizzen-mast—now the only ones left on the ship, with the exception of the fouled main-yard—being squared or braced up to help her inclination to either side, which was also assisted by the loose mizzentop sail. This latter had only been hauled up by the clewlines and buntlines when sail was shortened, so as to be available to be dropped and sheeted home at a moment’s notice in any sudden emergency when it might be necessary to get way on the ship to prevent her running foul of some giant iceberg that was trying to overtake her. From midnight the only break in the monotony of the silent watch, throughout the anxious hours that elapsed before daylight, was the warning cry of the look-outs’ forward “Ice ahead!” or “Ice on the lee bow!” with the sailing directions of the captain to the steersman, quickly following the words of warning, “Hard up with the helm!” or else, “Keep her off a little, my man!” or the single word,—sometimes the most important order of all,—“Steady!”In the cuddy, naturally, it was an equally anxious time throughout the trying night; indeed, more so, considering the state of mind of those concerned.Mr Meldrum, on going below, had told of the course of things above, explaining the perilous position of the ship without unduly alarming the nervous susceptibilities of the women folk, and after his periodical visits to the deck he brought back the cheering news that all was as yet going on well; but still, the very fact of being unable to do anything save watch and pray, was even more exhausting and wearying than in being exposed to the bitter weather like the crew and officers of the ship were—for the sense of duty and something constantly calling on their attention prevented the latter from thinking, as those could only do who had no cause or call for action.The American passenger did not, however, appear in the least put out or more than ordinarily impressed with the gravity of the situation, taking it, as it were, as a matter of course.“It’s no use making a muss over what can’t be helped,” he said with the utmost sang-froid. “The ship’s in good hands, and as I can’t do anything, why I guess I’ll let things ride and be as comf’able as I ken.” So he ate and drank with just as good an appetite as ever when dinnertime came—though it was later than usual, through Snowball not having been able to light the galley fire till nearly dark; and, on the arrival, according to Mr Zachariah Lathrope’s reckoning, of bedtime, he curled himself up in his bunk, going to sleep as composedly as if he had been safe and sound ashore, with the comforting assurance to the others, as he said “good-night,” that “if things should kinder turn out onpleasant, why, I guess they’ll rouse me up!”Florry Meldrum, too, and Master Maurice Negus were not one whit the more alarmed by the critical condition of theNancy Belleither; but, neither Maurice’s mother nor Kate closed their eyes for a moment the livelong night.When some feeble rays of light at length strayed down through the skylight, causing the lamps over the cuddy table to burn more dimly, when the scuttles in the cabins, seen through the half-opened doors, became illumined by some reflection from without, showing that the long-wished-for morning had broken at last, Kate, unable to endure the suspense any longer, put on her cloak and went on deck.The scene and all its surroundings had very much altered since she had last been up the companion-way; so that when she got on the poop now, so great a transformation had occurred that it seemed to her as if she were in a species of nautical fairyland.The ship herself was cased in ice—hull, spars, and standing rigging, and all—with long pendulous icicles hanging from the main and mizzen yards. The fog or mist having also cleared away and the clouds vanished from the sky, every object glittered like jewels in the golden rays of the rising sun.But theNancy Bellwas not the only object of attraction and interest.She was surrounded by icebergs in every direction—to the right, to the left, right in front, and astern—some little mites not bigger than cockle-shells in comparison with the larger ones, baby bergs, so to speak, and others as lofty as mountains, extending as far as the eye could reach to the horizon; the ship racing by them and threaded her way in and out between the moving masses with the dexterity of a Highlander executing the sword-dance. The wind was still blowing more than half a gale from the northward and westward, and the vessel was running before it under the fore staysail and mizzentop-sail, which had been dropped again with the reef points shaken out, making eight knots good, too, at that.Where there was no ice, the rolling sea was of an intense ultramarine blue, reflecting the colour of the distant sky; while, as the sun came up higher, different tints were displayed by the icebergs, whose shape was as various as their sizes—bergs that in their gorgeous architecture and fairy magnificence, with fantastic peaks and airy pinnacles, which glittered now in the full light of day with all the varied colours of the rainbow, flashing out scintillations and radiances of violet and iris, purple and turquoise, and sapphire blue, emerald green and orange, blush rose and pink and red—all mingled with soft shades of crimson and carmine, and interspersed with gleams of gold and silver and a frosting over all of bright white light.“Ah!” ejaculated Kate, uttering her thoughts aloud, so carried away was she by the vivid beauty of the scene, “those who haven’t seen an iceberg at sea at sunrise, have no idea of the grand loveliness of God’s handiwork in nature!”“They look beautiful enough now, missy,” said Captain Dinks, who had come to her side unnoticed, and seemed much jollier than he had done the night before, when he thought the ship in her last extremity; “but we didn’t think them so a little while ago, when it looked as if the poor oldNancy Bellwould lay her old bones amongst them!”“Ah! Captain Dinks,” replied she, “there was One above looking after us then, as he is now!”“You are right,” said he earnestly; “or we should never have escaped as we did; once or twice, when we grazed a berg, I thought it was all up with us.”“Oh!” exclaimed Kate with a shudder, “it was a terrible night; and you and the poor fellows on deck must have found it bitterly cold.”“Not a doubt of that,” said Captain Dinks laughing. “I was almost half-frozen in the mizzen rigging; and as for poor Frank Harness, when he came off the fore-scuttle, where he was stationed all night to pass the word from the look-outs forward, he could hardly move his limbs! If it hadn’t been for the hot coffee our friend Snowball served out every two hours to warm us up, I don’t believe any of us would have been alive this morning. But here comes your father. How sly your were all to keep it so carefully concealed that he was in the navy; and I taking him all the time for a lubberly landsman! I’ll never forgive myself; for you must all have laughed at me, especially you, Miss Kate, and your roguish little sister. Ah! good morning, Mr Meldrum,” added the captain turning to that gentleman; “I was just thinking about you. I wanted to have a consultation about our course. My dead reckoning is all at sea, and I hardly can guess where we are now; but I trust we shall be able to get an observation of the sun at noon, and then we will be able to prick off our position on the chart.”“I sincerely hope so,” said Mr Meldrum; “for I think we’re going far too much to the southward.”“Do you, still, eh?” replied Captain Dinks. “I don’t quite agree with you. I thought it best to keep the ship before the wind, not only because it eases her but on account of the gale being bound to slacken down soon; and if we run down to a lower latitude, as I have frequently done in this part of the ocean before, we will probably get fine weather and be able to tinker up the old craft and make her look all a taunto again.”“Ah!” said Mr Meldrum, “you are just as likely to run on to something else, not quite so pleasant as fine weather! Mark my words, Captain Dinks, I am as certain, and more so now than I was three days ago, as I told you then, that we are far down in the Forties; and what with the easting we have made since passing the meridian of the Cape and the leeway we have drifted, we must be pretty close to the Crozet Islands or Kerguelen Land.”“Kerguelen Land!” ejaculated the captain; “nonsense, man; why we are hundreds of miles to the westward of it.”“Are we?” replied Mr Meldrum. “Well, just wait till twelve o’clock and we’ll see who is right, you or I!”Hardly, however, had the words escaped his lips than the look-out man in the maintop—who had been replaced as soon as day broke, when the prospect around the ship became more extended, thus rendering his services useful—shouted out a cry that had almost been forgotten, and which made every heart on board leap with mingled feelings of overpowering joy, consternation, surprise, dismay! Every pulse stopped for a second spellbound! The cry was—“Land ho!”
“Let go the mizzentop-sail halliards, and man the fore staysail down-haul!” shouted out Captain Dinks the moment Mr Meldrum had spoken; and, the helm being put down at the same time, the ship was again brought head to wind, almost sooner than it has taken to describe the operation. However, as it was observed after a little while that the vessel drifted so rapidly to leeward, through the mere force of the wind on her exposed hull and remaining spars, not to speak of the wash of the sea, and thus ran in quite as great danger of colliding with the ice as if she had been going ahead, the fore staysail, reefed into the most attenuated proportions, was set again—so that the ship might be under steerage way and be able to avoid, under judicious control, the numerous small bergs that now hove in sight like miniature islands in every direction, making the navigation perilous in the extreme.
As night came on, too, the dangers surrounding theNancy Bellincreased tenfold; for, the wind not only blew with greater strength, but it was accompanied by blinding showers of hail and snow, while a thick fog rose from the freezing water, more like steam than anything else, obscuring everything and preventing the floating ice from being seen until it was immediately under the bows.
It was just about the beginning of the second dog-watch at four bells—six o’clock in the evening—that the mist came; so, after a brief consultation with Mr Meldrum, Captain Dinks told the chief mate to call the hands aft.
“We are in as tight a hole, McCarthy,” said he, “as the poor old ship was ever placed in, and it will take us all our time to get out of it; so, it’s best to let all the hands know it, that each may do his best for the good of all.”
“Aye, aye, sorr,” answered Mr McCarthy; “it’s no sight o’ use beating about the bush when danger’s under weigh. Till ’em the truth, Cap’en, and shame the divil!” Soon afterwards, his ringing voice calling, “all hands ahoy!” was heard forwards.
The crew were not long tumbling aft; and, when they had assembled on the main deck, Captain Dinks addressed them from the break of the poop.
“Men,” said he, “I’m sorry to say theNancy Bellis in a position of the greatest peril. We are now, after fighting with a cyclone for five days, being carried along by a rising gale into the midst of scattered icebergs, any one of which may knock a hole in the ship; while if we should run upon one of the bigger ones we must go to pieces at once. You know how, throughout the bad weather we’ve had, I have tried, to spare you as much as I could, conveniently with the proper working of the ship, and I’ve always allowed the watches their regular spell below; but to-night, and as long as we are surrounded by the ice, I can’t allow a man off duty! None of us can tell whether theNancy Bellwill be afloat and we alive by morning; so, no single hand must leave the deck without special permission. You may be certain I sha’n’t set the example, and you can now go forwards. I am about to set fresh look-outs, and each man will have his station.”
The majority of the crew gave a cheer at this, Ben Boltrope’s lusty voice being conspicuously to the fore; but some, amongst whom was a lazy lout named Bill Moody, who was the chief grumbler in the forecastle, expressed their discontent audibly; saying that they “hadn’t signed articles to be worked like dogs!”
Captain Dinks’ ears were pretty sharp, and he heard what was said; so he called the men back.
“I know who spoke,” said he, “and I wouldn’t disgrace the rest of the crew by supposing that they share his feelings; but I’ll add this for his benefit, that anybody who may be discontented will find me easy-going enough when I am stroked the right way, but a pretty tough customer when anybody falls athwart my hawse!”
While this little incident was taking place, of course, the usual look-out was not neglected, the Norwegian being still aloft in the maintop, with Frank Harness and Mr Adams on the forecastle; but now, extra men were detailed for the duty. Karl Ericksen, called down from the maintop where his range of view had become limited through the increasing darkness and snowstorm, was placed between the knight-heads; a man on each bow; Frank Harness on the fore scuttle; Mr McCarthy and Adams on the port and starboard quarters; and Ben Boltrope at the wheel—Captain Dinks being here, there, and everywhere to see that everybody was on thequi vive, even ascending the mizzen rigging sometimes into the top, to have an outlook from there and try whether his eyes could pierce the misty vapour that hung over the sea by dint of looking down into it.
Thenceforward, throughout the weary night, there was little to do save looking out and conning the ship.
When a large cake of ice or berg was seen drifting perilously near, or bearing down upon the vessel, the word was passed along the deck from forward to aft and her head turned one way or the other, the yards of the mizzen-mast—now the only ones left on the ship, with the exception of the fouled main-yard—being squared or braced up to help her inclination to either side, which was also assisted by the loose mizzentop sail. This latter had only been hauled up by the clewlines and buntlines when sail was shortened, so as to be available to be dropped and sheeted home at a moment’s notice in any sudden emergency when it might be necessary to get way on the ship to prevent her running foul of some giant iceberg that was trying to overtake her. From midnight the only break in the monotony of the silent watch, throughout the anxious hours that elapsed before daylight, was the warning cry of the look-outs’ forward “Ice ahead!” or “Ice on the lee bow!” with the sailing directions of the captain to the steersman, quickly following the words of warning, “Hard up with the helm!” or else, “Keep her off a little, my man!” or the single word,—sometimes the most important order of all,—“Steady!”
In the cuddy, naturally, it was an equally anxious time throughout the trying night; indeed, more so, considering the state of mind of those concerned.
Mr Meldrum, on going below, had told of the course of things above, explaining the perilous position of the ship without unduly alarming the nervous susceptibilities of the women folk, and after his periodical visits to the deck he brought back the cheering news that all was as yet going on well; but still, the very fact of being unable to do anything save watch and pray, was even more exhausting and wearying than in being exposed to the bitter weather like the crew and officers of the ship were—for the sense of duty and something constantly calling on their attention prevented the latter from thinking, as those could only do who had no cause or call for action.
The American passenger did not, however, appear in the least put out or more than ordinarily impressed with the gravity of the situation, taking it, as it were, as a matter of course.
“It’s no use making a muss over what can’t be helped,” he said with the utmost sang-froid. “The ship’s in good hands, and as I can’t do anything, why I guess I’ll let things ride and be as comf’able as I ken.” So he ate and drank with just as good an appetite as ever when dinnertime came—though it was later than usual, through Snowball not having been able to light the galley fire till nearly dark; and, on the arrival, according to Mr Zachariah Lathrope’s reckoning, of bedtime, he curled himself up in his bunk, going to sleep as composedly as if he had been safe and sound ashore, with the comforting assurance to the others, as he said “good-night,” that “if things should kinder turn out onpleasant, why, I guess they’ll rouse me up!”
Florry Meldrum, too, and Master Maurice Negus were not one whit the more alarmed by the critical condition of theNancy Belleither; but, neither Maurice’s mother nor Kate closed their eyes for a moment the livelong night.
When some feeble rays of light at length strayed down through the skylight, causing the lamps over the cuddy table to burn more dimly, when the scuttles in the cabins, seen through the half-opened doors, became illumined by some reflection from without, showing that the long-wished-for morning had broken at last, Kate, unable to endure the suspense any longer, put on her cloak and went on deck.
The scene and all its surroundings had very much altered since she had last been up the companion-way; so that when she got on the poop now, so great a transformation had occurred that it seemed to her as if she were in a species of nautical fairyland.
The ship herself was cased in ice—hull, spars, and standing rigging, and all—with long pendulous icicles hanging from the main and mizzen yards. The fog or mist having also cleared away and the clouds vanished from the sky, every object glittered like jewels in the golden rays of the rising sun.
But theNancy Bellwas not the only object of attraction and interest.
She was surrounded by icebergs in every direction—to the right, to the left, right in front, and astern—some little mites not bigger than cockle-shells in comparison with the larger ones, baby bergs, so to speak, and others as lofty as mountains, extending as far as the eye could reach to the horizon; the ship racing by them and threaded her way in and out between the moving masses with the dexterity of a Highlander executing the sword-dance. The wind was still blowing more than half a gale from the northward and westward, and the vessel was running before it under the fore staysail and mizzentop-sail, which had been dropped again with the reef points shaken out, making eight knots good, too, at that.
Where there was no ice, the rolling sea was of an intense ultramarine blue, reflecting the colour of the distant sky; while, as the sun came up higher, different tints were displayed by the icebergs, whose shape was as various as their sizes—bergs that in their gorgeous architecture and fairy magnificence, with fantastic peaks and airy pinnacles, which glittered now in the full light of day with all the varied colours of the rainbow, flashing out scintillations and radiances of violet and iris, purple and turquoise, and sapphire blue, emerald green and orange, blush rose and pink and red—all mingled with soft shades of crimson and carmine, and interspersed with gleams of gold and silver and a frosting over all of bright white light.
“Ah!” ejaculated Kate, uttering her thoughts aloud, so carried away was she by the vivid beauty of the scene, “those who haven’t seen an iceberg at sea at sunrise, have no idea of the grand loveliness of God’s handiwork in nature!”
“They look beautiful enough now, missy,” said Captain Dinks, who had come to her side unnoticed, and seemed much jollier than he had done the night before, when he thought the ship in her last extremity; “but we didn’t think them so a little while ago, when it looked as if the poor oldNancy Bellwould lay her old bones amongst them!”
“Ah! Captain Dinks,” replied she, “there was One above looking after us then, as he is now!”
“You are right,” said he earnestly; “or we should never have escaped as we did; once or twice, when we grazed a berg, I thought it was all up with us.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Kate with a shudder, “it was a terrible night; and you and the poor fellows on deck must have found it bitterly cold.”
“Not a doubt of that,” said Captain Dinks laughing. “I was almost half-frozen in the mizzen rigging; and as for poor Frank Harness, when he came off the fore-scuttle, where he was stationed all night to pass the word from the look-outs forward, he could hardly move his limbs! If it hadn’t been for the hot coffee our friend Snowball served out every two hours to warm us up, I don’t believe any of us would have been alive this morning. But here comes your father. How sly your were all to keep it so carefully concealed that he was in the navy; and I taking him all the time for a lubberly landsman! I’ll never forgive myself; for you must all have laughed at me, especially you, Miss Kate, and your roguish little sister. Ah! good morning, Mr Meldrum,” added the captain turning to that gentleman; “I was just thinking about you. I wanted to have a consultation about our course. My dead reckoning is all at sea, and I hardly can guess where we are now; but I trust we shall be able to get an observation of the sun at noon, and then we will be able to prick off our position on the chart.”
“I sincerely hope so,” said Mr Meldrum; “for I think we’re going far too much to the southward.”
“Do you, still, eh?” replied Captain Dinks. “I don’t quite agree with you. I thought it best to keep the ship before the wind, not only because it eases her but on account of the gale being bound to slacken down soon; and if we run down to a lower latitude, as I have frequently done in this part of the ocean before, we will probably get fine weather and be able to tinker up the old craft and make her look all a taunto again.”
“Ah!” said Mr Meldrum, “you are just as likely to run on to something else, not quite so pleasant as fine weather! Mark my words, Captain Dinks, I am as certain, and more so now than I was three days ago, as I told you then, that we are far down in the Forties; and what with the easting we have made since passing the meridian of the Cape and the leeway we have drifted, we must be pretty close to the Crozet Islands or Kerguelen Land.”
“Kerguelen Land!” ejaculated the captain; “nonsense, man; why we are hundreds of miles to the westward of it.”
“Are we?” replied Mr Meldrum. “Well, just wait till twelve o’clock and we’ll see who is right, you or I!”
Hardly, however, had the words escaped his lips than the look-out man in the maintop—who had been replaced as soon as day broke, when the prospect around the ship became more extended, thus rendering his services useful—shouted out a cry that had almost been forgotten, and which made every heart on board leap with mingled feelings of overpowering joy, consternation, surprise, dismay! Every pulse stopped for a second spellbound! The cry was—“Land ho!”
Chapter Fourteen.Scylla and Charybdis.“Land!” called out the captain. “Where away?”“On the weather-beam,” answered the man aloft, who still spoke in a voice which sounded as if he had been greatly startled. “It’s rising rapidly every moment, sir, out of the water.”“The fellow must be blind!” exclaimed Captain Dinks. “There is no land there in that direction, if I know it. He must be taking one of those big icebergs for an island; that’s about the matter. Hanged if I don’t go up and see for myself!”Running down the poop ladder, the captain soon started up the shrouds on the port side towards the maintop where the lookout man was stationed. It was not Karl Ericksen this time, whose word he would have implicitly taken, but Bill Moody, one of the worst of the crew, and who, it may be remembered, had already evinced an unsailorlike spirit by his insubordination on an occasion when the pluck and endurance of everyone required to be tested. From this fact alone, Captain Dinks was the less inclined to trust him.The captain, however, found mounting the ratlines not so easy a task as he might have imagined, for the rigging was all frozen hard and as unbending as iron; but he persevered unflinchingly, and disdaining to creep through the “lubber’s hole,” climbed over the top in the usual sailor’s way, although he puffed and panted a good deal when he got there, which proved to him that the flesh he had gained on his plump little person, since he had been a youngster and first shinned up the rigging, had not improved his climbing powers.“Now, where’s this wonderful land of your’s!” he asked, as soon as he got alongside of Bill Moody, taking his glass out of his pocket and adjusting the focus ready for action.“There,” answered the man surlily, pointing towards the north-east, where a faint blue bank seemed to rise out of the ocean above and beyond the ice-fields. It could be seen with the naked eye to be of a different colour to even the most distant bergs, the distinction being quite marked.“By Jove, the man’s right!” ejaculated Captain Dinks with surprise.“I knew I were,” said Bill Moody in a bragging sort of way. “I think I can see a hole in a ladder as well as most people; and if that ain’t land, why, I’ll eat it.”“There, that will do,” interposed the captain to stop any further remarks, while he proceeded to inspect the hazy object with keen attention for some minutes, after which he replaced his glass in his pocket and prepared to descend to the deck again.“Keep a sharp look-out,” he said to Moody as he disappeared over the side of the top, “and sing out, as soon as we get any nearer, whether you can see a line of breakers at the foot of the island; for island it is, sure enough!”“Aye, aye,” grunted out the man; and Captain Dinks went down the rigging even more carefully than he had ascended, finding great difficulty in preventing his unaccustomed feet from slipping off the ratlines, which were like rungs of the smoothest and most polished ice.“You were right, and I was wrong,” he said to Mr Meldrum, as soon as he had regained the poop. “There is land in sight, sure enough, although I can at present only see it faintly towards the north-east. It must be, as you say, either the Crozet Islands or Kerguelen Land, for there’s nothing else between us and the Australian continent, as we haven’t yet got quite so far south as the Antarctic regions.”“It’s probably Kerguelen Land,” observed Mr Meldrum, “for you couldn’t see the Crozets nearly so far off; but I hope there’s not going to be another change of the weather. It seems clouding over again.”“Not before we get an observation, I trust,” replied the captain; “I don’t like knocking about any longer without knowing where I am.”“Nor I, sorr,” put in the first mate heartily. “Sure it’s like goin’ in the dark to Bandon Fair, for all the worruld over.”“It’s not what we like,” interposed Mr Meldrum somewhat dryly. “We have got to put up with what we can get.”“True for you, sorr,” said Mr McCarthy, not to be beaten; “sure, but isn’t it best to make the best on it.”“That’s incontestable,” replied Mr Meldrum with a laugh; and there the conversation ended, Kate and her father going below to breakfast.The weather got thicker, with the wind coming in gusts and now and then shifting a bit, so that the solitary mizzen-topsail of theNancy Bellhad now again to be close reefed, and her course directed more towards the land, which they did not seem to near so rapidly as they had thought they would—owing probably to some current that was all the time carrying them southwards while they were steering towards the east.They were actuated, however, by no vulgar curiosity to inspect this ocean land in thus seeking to approach it.On an ordinary occasion they would most certainly have given it a pretty wide berth; but now, should the sky cloud over so much as to prevent their getting an observation of the sun by which to correct their latitude and longitude, the identification of the land would at once prove their position on the chart without further trouble. This was why they wanted to near it.After breakfast, when Mr Meldrum came on deck again, the wind had freshened considerably, although still blowing from the north-west, while the outlook was generally squally; but the sky above still kept clear, with the sun shining down at intervals, when the scud, which was beginning to fly about again, did not interpose to hide its beams. The land, the while, was steadily rising to the northward and eastward.“It’s Kerguelen Land, sure enough,” said Mr Meldrum, when, after imitating Captain Dinks and paying a visit to the maintop to reconnoitre, he returned to the poop. “I can see the outlying rocks towards its north-west extremity called ‘The Cloudy Isles,’ and away to the east I noticed the snow-white peak of Mount Ross, which stands in the centre of the island and is over six thousand feet high.”“Well, you’ve good eyesight to see that at the distance,” observed Captain Dinks in a chaffing way. “I wish my optics were as clear.”“I can see pretty well,” replied the other; “and if you had had to look out as sharply as I’ve had to do for pirate junks up the Gulf of Tonquin, I fancy you would have had your eyesight improved!”“All right, Mr Meldrum,” said Captain Dinks frankly. “I’m sure I did not doubt your word for a moment. I’ve never been so far south before, and feel a little out in my reckoning. However, it will soon be time to take the sun, and that will decide the point.”A few stray snowflakes came fluttering down on the deck just then, and both he and Mr Meldrum looked aloft. No cloud was to be seen exactly overhead, but a heavy bank of haze was creeping up from the south towards the zenith that looked ominous.“We shall have a repetition of yesterday again, I’m afraid,” said Mr Meldrum presently with much concern, after a long interval of silence between the two.“I’m afraid so,” was Captain Dinks’ reply; “but I hope it won’t come for another hour at least.” He then hailed the steward down the companion-way, telling him to bring up his sextant from the cabin.Fortunately, it just kept clear enough for an observation to be taken; and when Captain Dinks had worked it out, both he and Mr Meldrum acting independently so as to test the accuracy of the reckoning, it was found that the ship was in 48 degrees 50 minutes south latitude, and 68 degrees 40 minutes east longitude. Consequently, the land they were approaching could be none other than Kerguelen Land.“As we now know where we are,” said Mr Meldrum, when the fact was established, “we must give the island as wide a berth as we can, for the coast is most dangerous; and in winter-time, as it is now, July being the December of the antipodes, the most fearful storms are said to spring up at a moment’s notice in its vicinity. As the wind is still from the north-west, and we are well up to the northward, I should try to weather it if possible; and, if we can’t do that, we must pass to the south of the land.”“Very good,” replied the captain. “Only, you know the poor oldNancycannot sail as well now, as she could when in full trim. I don’t at all like the look of the weather, though, Mr Meldrum. It seems to me that ono of those coast storms you were speaking of is brewing up. The ice, too, is getting thick round us again; and if a fog comes on again we’ll be in a worse position than yesterday, for then we’d plenty of sea-room at any rate, while now, we have that blessed island almost dead to leeward.”“We must trust in Providence,” said Mr Meldrum, “and keep a sharp look-out if the fog thickens; but try to beat to windward we must, if possible!”During the bright morning, the hands, working diligently under the supervision and help of the first mate and Adams, the second, had been trying to make theNancy Bella little more shipshape, and, although they had been greatly hampered through the ropes and running gear being frozen so stiff that it was almost impossible to unbend or run them, they succeeded finally in trussing the mainyard again and splicing the braces, so that they now were able to set the mainsail reefed, a welcome addition to the limited sailing power of the ship in working to windward.All things were proceeding very satisfactorily in the afternoon, by which time they had got the land to bear well on the lee-beam, and it looked as if they could weather it; when, suddenly, there came on a thick snowstorm, mingled with showers of hail, and the same kind of mist which had risen almost at a precisely similar hour on the previous day again enveloped them in its folds, shutting out all view of the water at even a short distance from the vessel’s side.TheNancy Bellwas then steering nor’-nor’-east and some ten miles off the land, with the wind coming from the northward and westward in squalls. Presently, it blew so fresh that the lately set mainsail had to be taken in again, and next the mizzen, for the ship heeled over so much that it was thought at one time she would not recover her stability; but, even under the reefed fore staysail, which was still retained to enable her to weather the land, she tore through the water at such a rate, that, in spite of the continual watch, it was most difficult to avoid the heavy masses of floating ice that seemed to spring up on all sides again, and which she had appeared to have been leaving behind her in the morning.“Sure and it’s a worse look-out than last night, sorr,” said the first mate to Mr Meldrum, who was peering out anxiously to windward, the gale veering round just at the most critical time to the northward. “Faix, and I don’t think we can weather them islands now, with all this ice about too.”“Nor do I,” replied Mr Meldrum. “Captain Dinks, we’ll have to run for it. Do you think you can wear her?”“If your rudder holds out,” said the captain.“I’ll guarantee the rudder,” answered Mr Meldrum. “The only thing is, I fear the spars will go.”“We must risk those, my friend. It’s a case of neck or nothing now. Listen! Can you hear anything?” and the captain bent his ear to leeward.Yes, Mr Meldrum could hear something. They all could hear something above the shrieking of the wind, and the roar of the waves, and the crash of the cakes and bergs of ice tumbling against each other. It was something that sounded like the death-knell of theNancy Bell, and made their faces blanch with fear. It was the noise of breakers, distant yet, but still as plainly distinguishable as if quite near—breakers breaking on a lee-shore, the most terrible sound of all sounds to a sailor’s ear!“Stand by to wear ship!” shouted Captain Dinks, and he himself took hold of the spokes of the wheel as he uttered the words, easing it round, while the mate rushed forwards, calling the hands.“Tumble up, men, tumble up!” cried Mr McCarthy; “don’t stop for your clothes. All hands wear ship.”Frank Harness and Mr Adams had already darted towards the braces; and, the men soon joining them, the yards were braced round, the mizzen and mainsail being again dropped and sheeted home to enable her to pay off from the shore, which the vessel soon did on the other tack, although the canvas made her bury her bows in the sea and almost heel over till the mainyard dipped.“Let her carry on, she’ll bear it,” said the captain. “We cannot do too much to get away from those confounded breakers; I’d sooner hear anything than them!”“So would I,” responded Mr Meldrum, still looking pale, for theNancy Bellhad had a narrow squeak of going to the bottom when wearing; “but we are rushing into almost as terrible a danger as the lee-shore. If we come in contact with one of these icebergs, going at the speed we now do, the shock will sink us to a certainty.”“Well,” said the captain, “of the two dangers that is the least. By keeping a good look-out we may avoid the ice, which we could never do with the lee-shore, save by getting away from it, as we are doing now. By Jove, isn’t she walking along—the beauty, crippled as she is—just as if she knew the peril she was in!”“Better not holler till yer out of the wood,” observed Mr McCarthy; “as for myself, I wish it was mornin’ agin, sure!”He’d no sooner uttered the words, however, than the look-out man forward suddenly gave vent to a frightened exclamation, drawn from him by the sight of something unexpected and terrible.“Ice on the lee bow!” shouted he. “Port your helm hard!”But the warning came too late.Almost at the same instant as the cry reached the ears of those aft, theNancy Bellstruck full butt against a dark object that loomed up out of the fog right ahead of the ship, and which had been unperceived a moment before.There was a grinding rending crash and sound of breaking timbers, the vessel quivering from stem to stern; and then, the main and mizzen masts, with all their yards and the sails which had so lately been urging the ship on to her destruction toppled over the sides, whilst a wave, washing back from the base of the iceberg and coming in over the bows, swept the decks fore and aft.
“Land!” called out the captain. “Where away?”
“On the weather-beam,” answered the man aloft, who still spoke in a voice which sounded as if he had been greatly startled. “It’s rising rapidly every moment, sir, out of the water.”
“The fellow must be blind!” exclaimed Captain Dinks. “There is no land there in that direction, if I know it. He must be taking one of those big icebergs for an island; that’s about the matter. Hanged if I don’t go up and see for myself!”
Running down the poop ladder, the captain soon started up the shrouds on the port side towards the maintop where the lookout man was stationed. It was not Karl Ericksen this time, whose word he would have implicitly taken, but Bill Moody, one of the worst of the crew, and who, it may be remembered, had already evinced an unsailorlike spirit by his insubordination on an occasion when the pluck and endurance of everyone required to be tested. From this fact alone, Captain Dinks was the less inclined to trust him.
The captain, however, found mounting the ratlines not so easy a task as he might have imagined, for the rigging was all frozen hard and as unbending as iron; but he persevered unflinchingly, and disdaining to creep through the “lubber’s hole,” climbed over the top in the usual sailor’s way, although he puffed and panted a good deal when he got there, which proved to him that the flesh he had gained on his plump little person, since he had been a youngster and first shinned up the rigging, had not improved his climbing powers.
“Now, where’s this wonderful land of your’s!” he asked, as soon as he got alongside of Bill Moody, taking his glass out of his pocket and adjusting the focus ready for action.
“There,” answered the man surlily, pointing towards the north-east, where a faint blue bank seemed to rise out of the ocean above and beyond the ice-fields. It could be seen with the naked eye to be of a different colour to even the most distant bergs, the distinction being quite marked.
“By Jove, the man’s right!” ejaculated Captain Dinks with surprise.
“I knew I were,” said Bill Moody in a bragging sort of way. “I think I can see a hole in a ladder as well as most people; and if that ain’t land, why, I’ll eat it.”
“There, that will do,” interposed the captain to stop any further remarks, while he proceeded to inspect the hazy object with keen attention for some minutes, after which he replaced his glass in his pocket and prepared to descend to the deck again.
“Keep a sharp look-out,” he said to Moody as he disappeared over the side of the top, “and sing out, as soon as we get any nearer, whether you can see a line of breakers at the foot of the island; for island it is, sure enough!”
“Aye, aye,” grunted out the man; and Captain Dinks went down the rigging even more carefully than he had ascended, finding great difficulty in preventing his unaccustomed feet from slipping off the ratlines, which were like rungs of the smoothest and most polished ice.
“You were right, and I was wrong,” he said to Mr Meldrum, as soon as he had regained the poop. “There is land in sight, sure enough, although I can at present only see it faintly towards the north-east. It must be, as you say, either the Crozet Islands or Kerguelen Land, for there’s nothing else between us and the Australian continent, as we haven’t yet got quite so far south as the Antarctic regions.”
“It’s probably Kerguelen Land,” observed Mr Meldrum, “for you couldn’t see the Crozets nearly so far off; but I hope there’s not going to be another change of the weather. It seems clouding over again.”
“Not before we get an observation, I trust,” replied the captain; “I don’t like knocking about any longer without knowing where I am.”
“Nor I, sorr,” put in the first mate heartily. “Sure it’s like goin’ in the dark to Bandon Fair, for all the worruld over.”
“It’s not what we like,” interposed Mr Meldrum somewhat dryly. “We have got to put up with what we can get.”
“True for you, sorr,” said Mr McCarthy, not to be beaten; “sure, but isn’t it best to make the best on it.”
“That’s incontestable,” replied Mr Meldrum with a laugh; and there the conversation ended, Kate and her father going below to breakfast.
The weather got thicker, with the wind coming in gusts and now and then shifting a bit, so that the solitary mizzen-topsail of theNancy Bellhad now again to be close reefed, and her course directed more towards the land, which they did not seem to near so rapidly as they had thought they would—owing probably to some current that was all the time carrying them southwards while they were steering towards the east.
They were actuated, however, by no vulgar curiosity to inspect this ocean land in thus seeking to approach it.
On an ordinary occasion they would most certainly have given it a pretty wide berth; but now, should the sky cloud over so much as to prevent their getting an observation of the sun by which to correct their latitude and longitude, the identification of the land would at once prove their position on the chart without further trouble. This was why they wanted to near it.
After breakfast, when Mr Meldrum came on deck again, the wind had freshened considerably, although still blowing from the north-west, while the outlook was generally squally; but the sky above still kept clear, with the sun shining down at intervals, when the scud, which was beginning to fly about again, did not interpose to hide its beams. The land, the while, was steadily rising to the northward and eastward.
“It’s Kerguelen Land, sure enough,” said Mr Meldrum, when, after imitating Captain Dinks and paying a visit to the maintop to reconnoitre, he returned to the poop. “I can see the outlying rocks towards its north-west extremity called ‘The Cloudy Isles,’ and away to the east I noticed the snow-white peak of Mount Ross, which stands in the centre of the island and is over six thousand feet high.”
“Well, you’ve good eyesight to see that at the distance,” observed Captain Dinks in a chaffing way. “I wish my optics were as clear.”
“I can see pretty well,” replied the other; “and if you had had to look out as sharply as I’ve had to do for pirate junks up the Gulf of Tonquin, I fancy you would have had your eyesight improved!”
“All right, Mr Meldrum,” said Captain Dinks frankly. “I’m sure I did not doubt your word for a moment. I’ve never been so far south before, and feel a little out in my reckoning. However, it will soon be time to take the sun, and that will decide the point.”
A few stray snowflakes came fluttering down on the deck just then, and both he and Mr Meldrum looked aloft. No cloud was to be seen exactly overhead, but a heavy bank of haze was creeping up from the south towards the zenith that looked ominous.
“We shall have a repetition of yesterday again, I’m afraid,” said Mr Meldrum presently with much concern, after a long interval of silence between the two.
“I’m afraid so,” was Captain Dinks’ reply; “but I hope it won’t come for another hour at least.” He then hailed the steward down the companion-way, telling him to bring up his sextant from the cabin.
Fortunately, it just kept clear enough for an observation to be taken; and when Captain Dinks had worked it out, both he and Mr Meldrum acting independently so as to test the accuracy of the reckoning, it was found that the ship was in 48 degrees 50 minutes south latitude, and 68 degrees 40 minutes east longitude. Consequently, the land they were approaching could be none other than Kerguelen Land.
“As we now know where we are,” said Mr Meldrum, when the fact was established, “we must give the island as wide a berth as we can, for the coast is most dangerous; and in winter-time, as it is now, July being the December of the antipodes, the most fearful storms are said to spring up at a moment’s notice in its vicinity. As the wind is still from the north-west, and we are well up to the northward, I should try to weather it if possible; and, if we can’t do that, we must pass to the south of the land.”
“Very good,” replied the captain. “Only, you know the poor oldNancycannot sail as well now, as she could when in full trim. I don’t at all like the look of the weather, though, Mr Meldrum. It seems to me that ono of those coast storms you were speaking of is brewing up. The ice, too, is getting thick round us again; and if a fog comes on again we’ll be in a worse position than yesterday, for then we’d plenty of sea-room at any rate, while now, we have that blessed island almost dead to leeward.”
“We must trust in Providence,” said Mr Meldrum, “and keep a sharp look-out if the fog thickens; but try to beat to windward we must, if possible!”
During the bright morning, the hands, working diligently under the supervision and help of the first mate and Adams, the second, had been trying to make theNancy Bella little more shipshape, and, although they had been greatly hampered through the ropes and running gear being frozen so stiff that it was almost impossible to unbend or run them, they succeeded finally in trussing the mainyard again and splicing the braces, so that they now were able to set the mainsail reefed, a welcome addition to the limited sailing power of the ship in working to windward.
All things were proceeding very satisfactorily in the afternoon, by which time they had got the land to bear well on the lee-beam, and it looked as if they could weather it; when, suddenly, there came on a thick snowstorm, mingled with showers of hail, and the same kind of mist which had risen almost at a precisely similar hour on the previous day again enveloped them in its folds, shutting out all view of the water at even a short distance from the vessel’s side.
TheNancy Bellwas then steering nor’-nor’-east and some ten miles off the land, with the wind coming from the northward and westward in squalls. Presently, it blew so fresh that the lately set mainsail had to be taken in again, and next the mizzen, for the ship heeled over so much that it was thought at one time she would not recover her stability; but, even under the reefed fore staysail, which was still retained to enable her to weather the land, she tore through the water at such a rate, that, in spite of the continual watch, it was most difficult to avoid the heavy masses of floating ice that seemed to spring up on all sides again, and which she had appeared to have been leaving behind her in the morning.
“Sure and it’s a worse look-out than last night, sorr,” said the first mate to Mr Meldrum, who was peering out anxiously to windward, the gale veering round just at the most critical time to the northward. “Faix, and I don’t think we can weather them islands now, with all this ice about too.”
“Nor do I,” replied Mr Meldrum. “Captain Dinks, we’ll have to run for it. Do you think you can wear her?”
“If your rudder holds out,” said the captain.
“I’ll guarantee the rudder,” answered Mr Meldrum. “The only thing is, I fear the spars will go.”
“We must risk those, my friend. It’s a case of neck or nothing now. Listen! Can you hear anything?” and the captain bent his ear to leeward.
Yes, Mr Meldrum could hear something. They all could hear something above the shrieking of the wind, and the roar of the waves, and the crash of the cakes and bergs of ice tumbling against each other. It was something that sounded like the death-knell of theNancy Bell, and made their faces blanch with fear. It was the noise of breakers, distant yet, but still as plainly distinguishable as if quite near—breakers breaking on a lee-shore, the most terrible sound of all sounds to a sailor’s ear!
“Stand by to wear ship!” shouted Captain Dinks, and he himself took hold of the spokes of the wheel as he uttered the words, easing it round, while the mate rushed forwards, calling the hands.
“Tumble up, men, tumble up!” cried Mr McCarthy; “don’t stop for your clothes. All hands wear ship.”
Frank Harness and Mr Adams had already darted towards the braces; and, the men soon joining them, the yards were braced round, the mizzen and mainsail being again dropped and sheeted home to enable her to pay off from the shore, which the vessel soon did on the other tack, although the canvas made her bury her bows in the sea and almost heel over till the mainyard dipped.
“Let her carry on, she’ll bear it,” said the captain. “We cannot do too much to get away from those confounded breakers; I’d sooner hear anything than them!”
“So would I,” responded Mr Meldrum, still looking pale, for theNancy Bellhad had a narrow squeak of going to the bottom when wearing; “but we are rushing into almost as terrible a danger as the lee-shore. If we come in contact with one of these icebergs, going at the speed we now do, the shock will sink us to a certainty.”
“Well,” said the captain, “of the two dangers that is the least. By keeping a good look-out we may avoid the ice, which we could never do with the lee-shore, save by getting away from it, as we are doing now. By Jove, isn’t she walking along—the beauty, crippled as she is—just as if she knew the peril she was in!”
“Better not holler till yer out of the wood,” observed Mr McCarthy; “as for myself, I wish it was mornin’ agin, sure!”
He’d no sooner uttered the words, however, than the look-out man forward suddenly gave vent to a frightened exclamation, drawn from him by the sight of something unexpected and terrible.
“Ice on the lee bow!” shouted he. “Port your helm hard!”
But the warning came too late.
Almost at the same instant as the cry reached the ears of those aft, theNancy Bellstruck full butt against a dark object that loomed up out of the fog right ahead of the ship, and which had been unperceived a moment before.
There was a grinding rending crash and sound of breaking timbers, the vessel quivering from stem to stern; and then, the main and mizzen masts, with all their yards and the sails which had so lately been urging the ship on to her destruction toppled over the sides, whilst a wave, washing back from the base of the iceberg and coming in over the bows, swept the decks fore and aft.
Chapter Fifteen.Making the best of it.All hands were on deck at the time of the collision; and, with one concentrated cry of alarm which was more a yell than anything else, the men rushed in a body amidships to where the long-boat was stowed.Captain Dinks, however hesitating and undecided as he had shown himself frequently of late in the navigation of the ship, now all at once brought out in this emergency that courage and capacity for command which he had really at bottom but which had been before dormant.“Back for your lives, men, to your stations!” he shouted. “Although the bows are stove in, the bulkhead forward will prevent the water from flooding us beyond the fore compartment and give us time to run the ship ashore, when we can all escape. No boat could live in the sea that’s now on; and if it did, it would run a worse chance of being stove in by the ice than our poor vessel had!”His words made the men hang back, all save Bill Moody and a couple of others, who began casting off the lashings of the longboat; but Mr McCarthy rushing down on the main deck and seizing a capstan bar with which he threatened to brain the first man who resisted the captain’s authority, the unruly ones desisted for the time, slinking forwards grumblingly.“Carpenter,” called out Captain Dinks, “sound the well and see what damage has been done; and, Mr Adams, send the port watch aft to clear away this top hamper. It is thumping away alongside and may make another breach in our timbers!”The captain’s apparent calmness, combined with the sense of duty paramount on ship-board, made the men set to work with a will; besides which, they well knew that by acting together in harmony they had a better chance of escape than by any mere individual effort. Mr McCarthy, too, and Adams showed themselves equally as capable as Captain Dinks in lending a hand and encouraging the crew—Frank Harness being not one whit behindhand either; so that, within a very few minutes after the consternation which the catastrophe had caused on its first happening had passed away, all, recovering that equanimity habitual to sailors in almost any predicament or calamity, were engaged in carrying out the orders given them, as coolly as if theNancy Bellwere snug at anchor in some safe harbour. But, in what a sadly different position was she now!Battered as she had been by the storm in the Bay of Biscay and crippled by the terrible cyclone off the Cape, which had left her tossing rudderless and almost dismasted on the deep, her then condition was favourable in comparison with her present state—that of a complete wreck, with her bows stove in, her masts all carried by the board, and her decks swept fore and aft of everything!Fortunately, as the mainmast had fallen over the side, it had jammed against the iceberg with which they had collided, so fending off the vessel’s head that she had sheered to starboard and thus passed by the floating mountain; otherwise, probably, the poorNancy Bellwould have been ground down by the pressure of the ice below the surface of the sea. Ben Boltrope, too, returning from forward after a survey of the damage, in accordance with the captain’s command, reported another piece of good news. The bows had been stove in, it was true, and the bulkhead smashed, filling the fore compartment and bringing the ship’s head so much down that it would be almost impossible to sail her even in a smooth sea; but the jury-mast, which had been rigged forward in place of the lost foremast, had gone over on the port bow, instead of falling to the starboard side of the ship like the other masts, and the fore staysail attached to it, dragging overboard, had got sucked into the hole which the iceberg had made, thus stopping the inrun of water to any appreciable extent Ben said that he believed they would be able so to patch up the damaged place in the bows after a time, thanks to this circumstance, that they might hope to make a shift of rigging up a sail again to run the ship ashore with.“Bravo!” said Captain Dinks on hearing this. “Take what men you like and commence the repairs at once, for there’s no time to be lost Mr Meldrum, what say you to this?”But, Mr Meldrum had gone below to his daughters, well imagining the state of alarm they would be in and rather surprised that Kate had not already made her appearance on deck. When he reached the cuddy, the reason of her absence was explained.Poor Florry had met with an accident, the concussion when the ship had struck the iceberg having thrown her out of her berth, cutting her head against the cabin door; and Kate, assisted by Mr Lathrope, was binding up the wound and comforting the sufferer.“I guess, mister,” said the American, looking up as Mr Meldrum entered the main saloon, “I’ve had to act the good Samaritan, same as your gal did to me when I got jammed together t’other day in my innards agin the wash-stand! We’re fixin’ up the little miss finely. ’Tain’t much of an injoory, I kalkerlate, missy, though thar be a sight of blood, and it’ll soon git closed up agin!”“Thanks for your kind services,” said Mr Meldrum. “I would have been down before, but was too busy on deck.”“I know,” replied the other, nodding his head—“helping the captain out of the muss, eh? That wer an allfired smash, though! Done much hurt?”“Yes,” said Mr Meldrum guardedly, with a glance at the girls; “but the mischief’s over now for the present, though.”“I see, I see,” whispered Mr Lathrope; “I don’t need nary nother explanation, mister. I hev shed my eye-teeth, I hev, and thar’s no use in skearin’ folks. That madam the Meejur, now, has been going on tree-men-jus, an’ it has ben as much as your gal could kinder dew to get her to quiet down. Jee-rusalem! but she wer goin’ to have the cap’en up on court-martial, an’ the steward tarred and feathered, an’ the Lord knows what! Then, too, ther wer that b’y of hern, squalling like a frog in a fit, the durned young imp, I’d lief have skinned him! If it hadn’t been for your gal, they’d have raised thunder aboard, they would: you oughter be kinder proud, mister, to hev sich a sensible young woman fur yer darter! She warn’t a bit skeart when the shock came; but braced herself up as cool as a cowcumber, and thar she’s ben, keeping them noisy folks quiet, and tendin’ her little siss like a Christian!”“Indeed I am proud of her,” said Mr Meldrum, gazing at Kate fondly; “but you say nothing about yourself. You’ve been making yourself of use too.”“Snakes and alligators, mister, I ain’t worth a corn-chuck alongside of your gal! In course, I wer a bit flabbergasted when we collided just now—with one of them hammocks of ice, I guess, hey!”“Yes,” said Mr Meldrum, “we ran against an iceberg, and a pretty big one too.”“I thought so,” continued the other. “But you knows me by this time. I never gets upsot by no matter what happens, so I jest fixes on one of them life-belts I always has handy whenever I travels on them high-pressure steamboats we hev on the Mississippi—whar you run the chance of getting busted up regular every trip—and thar I turned out of my cabin slick for anything, so I wer able to help miss, har, in shaking down that dreadful old screech-owl yander, and plaster up little missy arterwards.”“How’s your arm now?” asked Mr Meldrum kindly.“Oh, the durned thing’s all right, only a bit stiff. Madam gave it a squoze jist now when I histed her off the floor, whar she got throwed down and wer bellowin’ like a mad bull in fly time. That made the pain grip me agin; but I dessay it’s all right now for a scrimmage if needs be.”“And where’s Mrs Negus, eh?”“Thar she is, with that young imp clasped in her arms, sobbin’ her heart out in her cabin; and if you go fur to comfort her, as I did just now, why, she bites your nose off like a crocodile, she dew! She sez we’ll all go to the bottom; and that the cap’en and everybody else have runned the ship ashore just to spite her—she knows, she sez, it’s ben only done fur that!”And the American laughed with a keen relish of the joke, which no sense of his own peril could subdue.“She isn’t far out in thinking the ship going down,” said Mr Meldrum gravely. “The vessel has a hole knocked in her bows, through which you might drive an omnibus, and her fore compartment is full of water. We’ll soon have to abandon her, although, I’ve no doubt, she’ll keep afloat for some hours yet. I advise you, Mr Lathrope, to put on the warmest suit of clothes you’ve got, and get together any few little things that may be of use in a boat, as I’m going to do. Kate, my dear,” he added, addressing his daughter, who had been listening attentively while he had been talking to the American, at the same time that she hushed and soothed Florry, who was moaning with pain from her injured head, “you’d better do likewise; and see also to poor Mrs Negus, who appears utterly helpless and unable to look after herself. Where are the steward and stewardess?”“The stewardess went on deck some time ago, papa, to try and get a cup of tea for Mrs Negus from the galley, and she has not yet returned,” answered Kate; “I think the steward is asleep in his pantry.”“I thought him too big a coward to keep so quiet when the ship was in any danger,” said her father. “However, he’ll have to rouse up now, whether he likes it or not.”“Hi, Llewellyn!” shouted he, going up to the door of the pantry, which was closed, and rapping outside with his fist loudly several times.But there was no answer; so, turning the handle of the lock unceremoniously, he looked within and saw to his astonishment the object of his quest coiled up in a corner of a locker that ran across one side of the pantry, with a heap of blankets drawn tightly over his head.Mr Meldrum entered and proceeded to shake the human bundle, calling the man again by name; when, after a little while, he disinterred his terrified face from amidst the folds of his coverings, looking as pale as a Niobe in marble.“Wha–wha–what do you want?” Llewellyn stammered out, with his usual stutter when spoken to sharply.“Rouse up, man, and turn out at once,” said Mr Meldrum. “What do you mean by hiding yourself here, cowering in a corner like a frightened hound, when the ship’s in danger and there’s work for all hands to do.”“I thought she was going down, sir, and—and—”“And you hadn’t the pluck to face your fate like a man, eh!” continued Mr Meldrum, finishing his sentence for him. “But you must know that brave men don’t allow cowards to hamper their movements! Get up at once, sir, and see about raising up all the tinned meats and cabin stores you can fetch out of the steerage. Now, look sharp!”“Ye–e–es, sir,” replied Llewellyn, crawling unwillingly out of his corner; “but, Cap’en Dinks said—”“No matter what Captain Dinks said,” interrupted Mr Meldrum, “I’ve got his authority for what I am doing, and order you at once to set about getting the provisions up for the boats. We’ll shortly have to abandon the ship; and, if you don’t obey my orders, you shall be left behind.”“I’ll do it at once, sir,” answered the steward with alacrity, the threat of being abandoned in the sinking vessel being quite sufficient to expedite his movements; and he at once made for the after hatch to get down into the hold, Mr Meldrum satisfying himself that he had set about the task before leaving him, and then, with a kindly word or two to Kate and Mr Lathrope, going on deck again.On gaining the poop, Mr Meldrum found that the snow had ceased to fall, the gale having gone down a bit. There was also a clear sky overhead, and a few stars were shining out; but the heavy misty fog still hung over the water, like a curtain, preventing the view of anything beyond a limited range from the sides of the ship, while the sea was extremely rough, the waves being nasty and choppy, as if some current or tideway was working against the wind, causing the rollers to break over the battered bows every now and then in sheets of foam.However, the outlook was better than he expected; and, besides, he could see, on looking round, that no time had been lost by Captain Dinks and the crew since he had been below.The wreck of the main-mast and mizzen-mast, with the yards and sails attached, which had been knocking about in the water alongside the ship—bumping against the timbers and threatening a danger almost as bad as the collision—had been cut adrift, the smaller spars being first cast loose and hoisted on board in case of need for jury-masts. The carpenter and some of the hands, meanwhile, had braced up the broken bulkhead with stout beams placed across, so as to prevent it from giving way under the strain and allowing the contents of the fore compartment to flood the main hold; for, it was utterly impossible for the present to clear it of water, although the pumps, which had been kept constantly going, sufficed to keep the rest of the ship pretty free and avert the danger of sinking for a time. It was only a question of time!The captain was just then overhauling the longboat, which, with the jolly-boat, that had been stowed inside of the former for safety and convenience, were the only two boats that had been left, the others having been washed off the beams at the time that the cook’s caboose had been carried away during the cyclone; and Mr Meldrum, going down on to the main-deck, approached the skipper.“We’ll have to take to the boats soon,” said the captain, turning round as he came up, “that is, when the sea moderates a bit. I don’t see anything else that can be done—do you?”“If I were you,” suggested Mr Meldrum, “I would try and run her ashore first and beach her. We’re not far from Kerguelen Land, and though it is now winter time on the island and desolate enough, it would be better our stopping there than wandering about the ocean in the boats, trying to get into the track of the Australian liners, or else making for the Cape, the only place we could steer for.”“It’s a bad look-out any way,” said the captain despondently.“Yes, I grant that,” replied the other; “but, if we land there and manage to hold out till September or October, only three months at the outside, a lot of whaling craft generally put into Kerguelen for the seal-fishery about that time, and I daresay we could get one of these to take us to the Cape.”“Perhaps that would be the best,” said Captain Dinks, reflecting a moment—“but what would you advise now—how are we to get ashore, eh!”“Why, rig up a jury-mast or two at once and make for the land!” answered Mr Meldrum promptly. “The island must be close to us now to leeward; and with this wind we ought to be able to reach the shore by daybreak, when we would be able to look about us better. It is certainly not the slightest good our remaining here doing nothing till then, for the carpenter tells me, it is only just as much as the men can do to keep down the water by constant pumping, so by the morning they’ll be pretty nigh exhausted and we be no better off. Besides, as you can observe for yourself, it would be madness while that sea is on to try to launch the boats, unless we are absolutely compelled to do so in order to save our lives; whereas, if we run the old craft ashore, we will have the boats for a last chance.”“I suppose you’re right,” said Captain Dinks, “though I can’t say that I like to leave the poor old thing’s bones to bleach on this outlandish coast. What say you, Mr McCarthy, eh?”“I agree, sure, with Mr Meldrum, son. He spakes like a sailor; and as he’s a naval officer he ought to know best,” answered the chief mate. Mr Adams and Frank Harness, who were both also admitted to the “council of war,” having given a similar opinion, Mr Meldrum’s advice was immediately acted upon.Without delay, a small jury-mast was rigged up aft, attached to the stump of the mizzen-mast, and one on the main-deck, close to where the main-mast bitts yet remained, as it was thought better not to step the jury-masts too far forward, for fear of the vessel plunging her bows under. After this, the mizzen-topsail and topgallant-sail, which had been cut off from the yards and saved from the wreck, were hoisted on roughly improvised yards; when, theNancy Bellbeing brought round with the wind abeam, was cast loose from the wreckage and headed due east towards the land—in the very direction whence had been heard the sound of breakers, and which all on board had been so anxious to give a wide berth to but so few short hours before. What had been her dire peril was now looked on as a haven of safety!
All hands were on deck at the time of the collision; and, with one concentrated cry of alarm which was more a yell than anything else, the men rushed in a body amidships to where the long-boat was stowed.
Captain Dinks, however hesitating and undecided as he had shown himself frequently of late in the navigation of the ship, now all at once brought out in this emergency that courage and capacity for command which he had really at bottom but which had been before dormant.
“Back for your lives, men, to your stations!” he shouted. “Although the bows are stove in, the bulkhead forward will prevent the water from flooding us beyond the fore compartment and give us time to run the ship ashore, when we can all escape. No boat could live in the sea that’s now on; and if it did, it would run a worse chance of being stove in by the ice than our poor vessel had!”
His words made the men hang back, all save Bill Moody and a couple of others, who began casting off the lashings of the longboat; but Mr McCarthy rushing down on the main deck and seizing a capstan bar with which he threatened to brain the first man who resisted the captain’s authority, the unruly ones desisted for the time, slinking forwards grumblingly.
“Carpenter,” called out Captain Dinks, “sound the well and see what damage has been done; and, Mr Adams, send the port watch aft to clear away this top hamper. It is thumping away alongside and may make another breach in our timbers!”
The captain’s apparent calmness, combined with the sense of duty paramount on ship-board, made the men set to work with a will; besides which, they well knew that by acting together in harmony they had a better chance of escape than by any mere individual effort. Mr McCarthy, too, and Adams showed themselves equally as capable as Captain Dinks in lending a hand and encouraging the crew—Frank Harness being not one whit behindhand either; so that, within a very few minutes after the consternation which the catastrophe had caused on its first happening had passed away, all, recovering that equanimity habitual to sailors in almost any predicament or calamity, were engaged in carrying out the orders given them, as coolly as if theNancy Bellwere snug at anchor in some safe harbour. But, in what a sadly different position was she now!
Battered as she had been by the storm in the Bay of Biscay and crippled by the terrible cyclone off the Cape, which had left her tossing rudderless and almost dismasted on the deep, her then condition was favourable in comparison with her present state—that of a complete wreck, with her bows stove in, her masts all carried by the board, and her decks swept fore and aft of everything!
Fortunately, as the mainmast had fallen over the side, it had jammed against the iceberg with which they had collided, so fending off the vessel’s head that she had sheered to starboard and thus passed by the floating mountain; otherwise, probably, the poorNancy Bellwould have been ground down by the pressure of the ice below the surface of the sea. Ben Boltrope, too, returning from forward after a survey of the damage, in accordance with the captain’s command, reported another piece of good news. The bows had been stove in, it was true, and the bulkhead smashed, filling the fore compartment and bringing the ship’s head so much down that it would be almost impossible to sail her even in a smooth sea; but the jury-mast, which had been rigged forward in place of the lost foremast, had gone over on the port bow, instead of falling to the starboard side of the ship like the other masts, and the fore staysail attached to it, dragging overboard, had got sucked into the hole which the iceberg had made, thus stopping the inrun of water to any appreciable extent Ben said that he believed they would be able so to patch up the damaged place in the bows after a time, thanks to this circumstance, that they might hope to make a shift of rigging up a sail again to run the ship ashore with.
“Bravo!” said Captain Dinks on hearing this. “Take what men you like and commence the repairs at once, for there’s no time to be lost Mr Meldrum, what say you to this?”
But, Mr Meldrum had gone below to his daughters, well imagining the state of alarm they would be in and rather surprised that Kate had not already made her appearance on deck. When he reached the cuddy, the reason of her absence was explained.
Poor Florry had met with an accident, the concussion when the ship had struck the iceberg having thrown her out of her berth, cutting her head against the cabin door; and Kate, assisted by Mr Lathrope, was binding up the wound and comforting the sufferer.
“I guess, mister,” said the American, looking up as Mr Meldrum entered the main saloon, “I’ve had to act the good Samaritan, same as your gal did to me when I got jammed together t’other day in my innards agin the wash-stand! We’re fixin’ up the little miss finely. ’Tain’t much of an injoory, I kalkerlate, missy, though thar be a sight of blood, and it’ll soon git closed up agin!”
“Thanks for your kind services,” said Mr Meldrum. “I would have been down before, but was too busy on deck.”
“I know,” replied the other, nodding his head—“helping the captain out of the muss, eh? That wer an allfired smash, though! Done much hurt?”
“Yes,” said Mr Meldrum guardedly, with a glance at the girls; “but the mischief’s over now for the present, though.”
“I see, I see,” whispered Mr Lathrope; “I don’t need nary nother explanation, mister. I hev shed my eye-teeth, I hev, and thar’s no use in skearin’ folks. That madam the Meejur, now, has been going on tree-men-jus, an’ it has ben as much as your gal could kinder dew to get her to quiet down. Jee-rusalem! but she wer goin’ to have the cap’en up on court-martial, an’ the steward tarred and feathered, an’ the Lord knows what! Then, too, ther wer that b’y of hern, squalling like a frog in a fit, the durned young imp, I’d lief have skinned him! If it hadn’t been for your gal, they’d have raised thunder aboard, they would: you oughter be kinder proud, mister, to hev sich a sensible young woman fur yer darter! She warn’t a bit skeart when the shock came; but braced herself up as cool as a cowcumber, and thar she’s ben, keeping them noisy folks quiet, and tendin’ her little siss like a Christian!”
“Indeed I am proud of her,” said Mr Meldrum, gazing at Kate fondly; “but you say nothing about yourself. You’ve been making yourself of use too.”
“Snakes and alligators, mister, I ain’t worth a corn-chuck alongside of your gal! In course, I wer a bit flabbergasted when we collided just now—with one of them hammocks of ice, I guess, hey!”
“Yes,” said Mr Meldrum, “we ran against an iceberg, and a pretty big one too.”
“I thought so,” continued the other. “But you knows me by this time. I never gets upsot by no matter what happens, so I jest fixes on one of them life-belts I always has handy whenever I travels on them high-pressure steamboats we hev on the Mississippi—whar you run the chance of getting busted up regular every trip—and thar I turned out of my cabin slick for anything, so I wer able to help miss, har, in shaking down that dreadful old screech-owl yander, and plaster up little missy arterwards.”
“How’s your arm now?” asked Mr Meldrum kindly.
“Oh, the durned thing’s all right, only a bit stiff. Madam gave it a squoze jist now when I histed her off the floor, whar she got throwed down and wer bellowin’ like a mad bull in fly time. That made the pain grip me agin; but I dessay it’s all right now for a scrimmage if needs be.”
“And where’s Mrs Negus, eh?”
“Thar she is, with that young imp clasped in her arms, sobbin’ her heart out in her cabin; and if you go fur to comfort her, as I did just now, why, she bites your nose off like a crocodile, she dew! She sez we’ll all go to the bottom; and that the cap’en and everybody else have runned the ship ashore just to spite her—she knows, she sez, it’s ben only done fur that!”
And the American laughed with a keen relish of the joke, which no sense of his own peril could subdue.
“She isn’t far out in thinking the ship going down,” said Mr Meldrum gravely. “The vessel has a hole knocked in her bows, through which you might drive an omnibus, and her fore compartment is full of water. We’ll soon have to abandon her, although, I’ve no doubt, she’ll keep afloat for some hours yet. I advise you, Mr Lathrope, to put on the warmest suit of clothes you’ve got, and get together any few little things that may be of use in a boat, as I’m going to do. Kate, my dear,” he added, addressing his daughter, who had been listening attentively while he had been talking to the American, at the same time that she hushed and soothed Florry, who was moaning with pain from her injured head, “you’d better do likewise; and see also to poor Mrs Negus, who appears utterly helpless and unable to look after herself. Where are the steward and stewardess?”
“The stewardess went on deck some time ago, papa, to try and get a cup of tea for Mrs Negus from the galley, and she has not yet returned,” answered Kate; “I think the steward is asleep in his pantry.”
“I thought him too big a coward to keep so quiet when the ship was in any danger,” said her father. “However, he’ll have to rouse up now, whether he likes it or not.”
“Hi, Llewellyn!” shouted he, going up to the door of the pantry, which was closed, and rapping outside with his fist loudly several times.
But there was no answer; so, turning the handle of the lock unceremoniously, he looked within and saw to his astonishment the object of his quest coiled up in a corner of a locker that ran across one side of the pantry, with a heap of blankets drawn tightly over his head.
Mr Meldrum entered and proceeded to shake the human bundle, calling the man again by name; when, after a little while, he disinterred his terrified face from amidst the folds of his coverings, looking as pale as a Niobe in marble.
“Wha–wha–what do you want?” Llewellyn stammered out, with his usual stutter when spoken to sharply.
“Rouse up, man, and turn out at once,” said Mr Meldrum. “What do you mean by hiding yourself here, cowering in a corner like a frightened hound, when the ship’s in danger and there’s work for all hands to do.”
“I thought she was going down, sir, and—and—”
“And you hadn’t the pluck to face your fate like a man, eh!” continued Mr Meldrum, finishing his sentence for him. “But you must know that brave men don’t allow cowards to hamper their movements! Get up at once, sir, and see about raising up all the tinned meats and cabin stores you can fetch out of the steerage. Now, look sharp!”
“Ye–e–es, sir,” replied Llewellyn, crawling unwillingly out of his corner; “but, Cap’en Dinks said—”
“No matter what Captain Dinks said,” interrupted Mr Meldrum, “I’ve got his authority for what I am doing, and order you at once to set about getting the provisions up for the boats. We’ll shortly have to abandon the ship; and, if you don’t obey my orders, you shall be left behind.”
“I’ll do it at once, sir,” answered the steward with alacrity, the threat of being abandoned in the sinking vessel being quite sufficient to expedite his movements; and he at once made for the after hatch to get down into the hold, Mr Meldrum satisfying himself that he had set about the task before leaving him, and then, with a kindly word or two to Kate and Mr Lathrope, going on deck again.
On gaining the poop, Mr Meldrum found that the snow had ceased to fall, the gale having gone down a bit. There was also a clear sky overhead, and a few stars were shining out; but the heavy misty fog still hung over the water, like a curtain, preventing the view of anything beyond a limited range from the sides of the ship, while the sea was extremely rough, the waves being nasty and choppy, as if some current or tideway was working against the wind, causing the rollers to break over the battered bows every now and then in sheets of foam.
However, the outlook was better than he expected; and, besides, he could see, on looking round, that no time had been lost by Captain Dinks and the crew since he had been below.
The wreck of the main-mast and mizzen-mast, with the yards and sails attached, which had been knocking about in the water alongside the ship—bumping against the timbers and threatening a danger almost as bad as the collision—had been cut adrift, the smaller spars being first cast loose and hoisted on board in case of need for jury-masts. The carpenter and some of the hands, meanwhile, had braced up the broken bulkhead with stout beams placed across, so as to prevent it from giving way under the strain and allowing the contents of the fore compartment to flood the main hold; for, it was utterly impossible for the present to clear it of water, although the pumps, which had been kept constantly going, sufficed to keep the rest of the ship pretty free and avert the danger of sinking for a time. It was only a question of time!
The captain was just then overhauling the longboat, which, with the jolly-boat, that had been stowed inside of the former for safety and convenience, were the only two boats that had been left, the others having been washed off the beams at the time that the cook’s caboose had been carried away during the cyclone; and Mr Meldrum, going down on to the main-deck, approached the skipper.
“We’ll have to take to the boats soon,” said the captain, turning round as he came up, “that is, when the sea moderates a bit. I don’t see anything else that can be done—do you?”
“If I were you,” suggested Mr Meldrum, “I would try and run her ashore first and beach her. We’re not far from Kerguelen Land, and though it is now winter time on the island and desolate enough, it would be better our stopping there than wandering about the ocean in the boats, trying to get into the track of the Australian liners, or else making for the Cape, the only place we could steer for.”
“It’s a bad look-out any way,” said the captain despondently.
“Yes, I grant that,” replied the other; “but, if we land there and manage to hold out till September or October, only three months at the outside, a lot of whaling craft generally put into Kerguelen for the seal-fishery about that time, and I daresay we could get one of these to take us to the Cape.”
“Perhaps that would be the best,” said Captain Dinks, reflecting a moment—“but what would you advise now—how are we to get ashore, eh!”
“Why, rig up a jury-mast or two at once and make for the land!” answered Mr Meldrum promptly. “The island must be close to us now to leeward; and with this wind we ought to be able to reach the shore by daybreak, when we would be able to look about us better. It is certainly not the slightest good our remaining here doing nothing till then, for the carpenter tells me, it is only just as much as the men can do to keep down the water by constant pumping, so by the morning they’ll be pretty nigh exhausted and we be no better off. Besides, as you can observe for yourself, it would be madness while that sea is on to try to launch the boats, unless we are absolutely compelled to do so in order to save our lives; whereas, if we run the old craft ashore, we will have the boats for a last chance.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Captain Dinks, “though I can’t say that I like to leave the poor old thing’s bones to bleach on this outlandish coast. What say you, Mr McCarthy, eh?”
“I agree, sure, with Mr Meldrum, son. He spakes like a sailor; and as he’s a naval officer he ought to know best,” answered the chief mate. Mr Adams and Frank Harness, who were both also admitted to the “council of war,” having given a similar opinion, Mr Meldrum’s advice was immediately acted upon.
Without delay, a small jury-mast was rigged up aft, attached to the stump of the mizzen-mast, and one on the main-deck, close to where the main-mast bitts yet remained, as it was thought better not to step the jury-masts too far forward, for fear of the vessel plunging her bows under. After this, the mizzen-topsail and topgallant-sail, which had been cut off from the yards and saved from the wreck, were hoisted on roughly improvised yards; when, theNancy Bellbeing brought round with the wind abeam, was cast loose from the wreckage and headed due east towards the land—in the very direction whence had been heard the sound of breakers, and which all on board had been so anxious to give a wide berth to but so few short hours before. What had been her dire peril was now looked on as a haven of safety!
Chapter Sixteen.Almost a Mutiny.Towards midnight, the slight surface fog, which had up to that time hung over the sea, lifted, when it could be seen that the ice had almost all disappeared—drifting towards the south, where some towering bergs, amongst which probably was the one that had done all the mischief to the ill-fated vessel, were conspicuous in the distance.The wind, also, had diminished considerably in force, blowing now from a point to the westward of north, although the waves were still rolling heavily, as they always do for some time after a storm in the southern ocean, setting in towards the land that was just faintly visible right ahead of theNancy Bell, and whither she was now proceeding steadily, but, of course, making but very slow progress through being waterlogged forwards and possessing such small sail-power.There was no moon, to complete the description; but the heavens above were twinkling with bright stars that gave sufficient light to illumine the horizon for miles round, for they touched up the crests of the waves with coruscations of silver, and made the broken spray gleam like jets of flame above the dark expanse of water. Everything, in a word, looked favourable for their enjoying a quiet interval on board after all the anxiety and hard work of the preceding day and night.Seeing that no pressing danger was imminent, and that nothing more could be done for the present, Mr Meldrum tried to induce Captain Dinks, who had been on deck for over forty-eight hours, to go below and have some rest, as he had a good deal yet before him to go through, and looked fagged and worn-out.But the captain would not hear of the suggestion for a moment.“No,” said he; “I mistrust that mutinous chap, Bill Moody, and the lot who sided with him in making a rush for the boats when we struck. I know they would be up to some mischief or other as soon as my back is turned.”“But there is McCarthy your chief mate,” replied Mr Meldrum, “surely he can take command of the vessel, as he has so often done before, while you have a spell off?”“Ah, McCarthy, though as good an officer as ever stepped a plank, isn’t myself, Mr Meldrum; and as for Adams, he wants backbone, while Frank Harness is too young a lad for the men to obey him if any difficulty arose. Besides, there are a lot of things to see to that want my supervision, which must be given while I have this breathing time—the boats have to be prepared and provisioned, for instance.”“Talking of that,” interrupted the other, “I have roused up that lazy steward of yours and set him to work collecting all the tinned meats and cabin stores he can find, and getting them up out of the steerage.”“That’s right,” said the captain. “It was very thoughtful, and just what I had intended doing myself, only I forgo it! I have got our old friend Snowball, the cook, busy here in the same way, boiling as much salt beef and pork as he can cram into his coppers, so that it may be ready-cooked when wanted and save time. The darkey has got the galley fire in full blast now.”“A good precaution,” said Mr Meldrum; “but I do wish I could get you to go below. If you like I’ll remain on deck in your stead?”But, no! Captain Dinks would not hear of leaving the deck until the fate of the poorNancy Bellwas settled for good or ill; and there he remained amidships—the mates sticking by him and lending a willing hand so as to inspire the crew with an equal energy—superintending the constant pumping operations which were necessary to keep the water from gaining, one watch at a time being engaged solely on the task. Others were preparing the longboat and jolly-boat for service, which was a tedious job, for the gunwales and bottom planking of both had been damaged greatly by the knocking about they had sustained since leaving England, even if they had been properly seaworthy then—a very problematical point, for many of the boats of merchant ships which carry passengers on distant voyages are never taken off the chocks or tested from year’s end to year’s end, in spite of all marine codes and Passenger Acts or Board of Trade ordinances to the contrary, and Mr Plimsoll’s effort notwithstanding!When Mr Meldrum got below again he found that matters had quieted down in the cuddy. Mrs Negus, persuaded at last that the ship was not immediately going to engulf herself and her darling boy, had been induced to take some refreshment—Snowball sending in a splendid hot supper by the direction of the captain, as the regular routine of the meals in the cuddy had been somewhat revolutionised through the calamities of the vessel. If she had any scruples, Mr Lathrope set the good lady a praiseworthy example in looking after the necessities of the inner man.“S’pose we air gwine down to Davy Jones’s Locker,” said the American, with a comical twinkle in his cunning grey eyes; “thar’s no reason why we shouldn’t go with a full stummick as well as one like an empty meal sack, hey? Look at me, marm. I treats it philosopherically, I dew, fur I find thars nothin’ like feedin’ to keep up a coon’s grit.”Mrs Major Negus murmured something about “somebody” being “shockingly vulgar,” but, whether inspired by Mr Lathrope’s “philosopherical” remark or not, she could not resist a second helping of some capital “lobscouse” which the darkey cook had dished up most appetisingly; after which the good lady retired to her cabin for the night in much more cheerful spirits.Florry’s cut head was easier, too, and by Mr Meldrum’s directions she and Kate turned in comparatively early. They really both wanted a good night’s rest, and their father was not long in following out his own precept, advising Mr Lathrope to do likewise, to which he was nothing loth; so that, soon after eight bells had struck, all the occupants of the saloon were buried in repose and the ship quiet—with the exception of an occasional tinkering sound from the main-deck, coupled with the “clink-clank” of the chain-pumps and the wash of the waves past the sides, all of which were almost inaudible aft.About four bells in the morning watch, Mr Meldrum awoke; and, without disturbing any of the others, he rose and went on deck.He seemed to have a presentiment of something happening.It was quite dark now, the stars having gone in and the sky become clouded over; while the wind had changed and was blowing in short sharp gusts from the southward, which, with the chopping sea, made the ship labour a good deal, taking in lots of water forward. She seemed to bury her head in every wave, her bows being so depressed from the fore compartment being full; and this compelled the crew in consequence to work double spells at the pumps, which caused much grumbling, for the men were almost dead beat, although Captain Dinks still kept them hard at it.The disaffection had almost reached a head before Mr Meldrum came up, on account of the captain keeping the port watch, in which was Moody and two of his special chums—at the unpleasant task, without allowing them a turn off below, as he had done the other watch, the members of which, however, had had their spell of duty before “all hands” had been called, and thus were fully entitled to the relief. But, the grumblers, in considering their own grievance, did not recollect this, and the appearance of the passenger, whom some of them were already inclined to dislike from something Ben Boltrope had dropped of his being a naval man, and the fact of his now ranging himself alongside of the captain, as if to support his authority, brought matters to a crisis.“Spell ho!” shouted Bill Moody defiantly, dropping his arms and striking work. “I’m hanged if I pump another stroke! The blessed old hulk can go to the bottom as soon as she likes.”“Nor I,” exclaimed another, likewise leaving off. “Nor I!” chorused half a dozen more; and, in a second, the pumps were at a standstill.Adams, the second mate, who was in charge of the men on the main deck—Mr McCarthy and Frank Harness having been sent below by Captain Dinks along with the starboard watch—stood meanwhile, staring aghast at the delinquents and not knowing what to do, “like a stock fish,” as Mr Meldrum thought, looking on the scene.It was a critical moment.Captain Dinks, of course, hearing the steady “clink, clank” of the pumps stop, knew that something had occurred, and guessed the cause; but he waited to hear what the second mate would say before he interfered, nudging Mr Meldrum to call his attention, although the latter was already listening with keen interest.“Do, my men,” they could hear Adams entreat the rebellious gang, “do put your hearts into it and start work again! It won’t be for long, you know.”“A cursed sight too long for me!” said Moody, interrupting him with a coarse laugh. “You aren’t a going to come over us with your soft sawder, nor the skipper neither! I, for one, ain’t agoing to have any more o’ this slave-driving work! Why should we sweat our hearts out trying to keep the old tub afloat and drive her to shore, when we can reach there quite as well in the boats, without half the trouble? I votes for quitting her at once—what say you, mates?” and he turned round to the others, seeking their support.“Aye, aye!” shouted several voices together with acclamation. “Let us have no more pumping or slaving; but quit the ship at once and leave the cussed thing to sink. To the boats! To the boats!”Captain Dinks thought he had allowed the matter to go far enough. The time for action had arrived, and he was ready.“Hold!” cried he, in clear ringing tones that penetrated fore and aft the vessel and which could be heard above every other sound, advancing to the top of the poop ladder and drawing a revolver from his pocket as he spoke. “The first man who touches either of those boats without my orders, I’ll shoot like a dog!”At the first sound of his voice the men had stopped speaking, and now there was a dead silence in which you could have heard a pin drop. Not a movement was made by any of the men—all standing still as if turned to stone.“Do you know that what you are doing, men, is rank mutiny?” continued the captain, taking advantage of the occasion. “Return to your duty at once, however, and I’ll think no more about it. What I am making you do is for the good of us all, and I wouldn’t give you a moment’s unnecessary work if I could avoid it!”“But,” interposed Bill Moody.“Ah, I thought it was you, you scamp, ever trying to foment discord amongst the crew—a lazy hound, always grumbling and skulking, you’re not worthy the name of a sailor—you are only a thing aboard a ship! I’ll soon settle your reckoning, my hearty!” And, little man as he was, Captain Dinks sprang down the poop ladder in one bound; and, dashing up to where Moody was standing, knocked him senseless to the deck with a blow from the butt end of the pistol which he held in his hand right across his temples.“There!” exclaimed he, when the ringleader of the gang was thus disposed of, kicking his body on one side and spurning it with his foot. “That’s the way I deal with mutineers! Now, man the pumps again, my lads, and set to work with a will. As Mr Adams told you just now, it will not be for long that you’ll have to stick at it, for we’ll soon be able to beach the vessel, and then your task will cease!”Cowed by his summary treatment of Moody, rather than encouraged by his words, the men started pumping again, although without any heartiness, clink-clanking till daylight, when they were relieved by the other watch and went below, taking Moody with them—that worthy having regained his consciousness after a time, in consequence of the water in the lee scuppers, where he was lying, washing over him and acting more efficaciously than the application of smelling-salts or sal volatile would have done under other circumstances.Before the mutineer went below, however, he turned his scowling face towards the poop, the blood all streaming down from a rather ugly cut on the left temple, and shook his fist in the direction of Captain Dinks, although the latter did not see the gesture, for his face was turned at the moment to the binnacle.But, Mr Meldrum saw it.“You’ll have some more trouble yet from that fellow!” said he to the captain, relating what he had seen and telling how Moody looked.“Pooh!” exclaimed the captain. “He’s only a bully and a lazy grumbler; and all bullies and grumblers are curs at heart!”“Ah,” said the other, “but those sort of sneaking chaps are just as likely to knife you as not when your back’s turned, though they would be afraid to face you pluckily, like a man.”“Let him knife away,” replied Captain Dinks. “That is, if I give him the chance! I fancy he’ll remember that little tap I gave him just now; and if he gives me any occasion for it he shall have another!” The skipper then went away laughing, but Mr Meldrum, from the vindictive look he had seen on the man’s face did not think it a laughing matter at all.
Towards midnight, the slight surface fog, which had up to that time hung over the sea, lifted, when it could be seen that the ice had almost all disappeared—drifting towards the south, where some towering bergs, amongst which probably was the one that had done all the mischief to the ill-fated vessel, were conspicuous in the distance.
The wind, also, had diminished considerably in force, blowing now from a point to the westward of north, although the waves were still rolling heavily, as they always do for some time after a storm in the southern ocean, setting in towards the land that was just faintly visible right ahead of theNancy Bell, and whither she was now proceeding steadily, but, of course, making but very slow progress through being waterlogged forwards and possessing such small sail-power.
There was no moon, to complete the description; but the heavens above were twinkling with bright stars that gave sufficient light to illumine the horizon for miles round, for they touched up the crests of the waves with coruscations of silver, and made the broken spray gleam like jets of flame above the dark expanse of water. Everything, in a word, looked favourable for their enjoying a quiet interval on board after all the anxiety and hard work of the preceding day and night.
Seeing that no pressing danger was imminent, and that nothing more could be done for the present, Mr Meldrum tried to induce Captain Dinks, who had been on deck for over forty-eight hours, to go below and have some rest, as he had a good deal yet before him to go through, and looked fagged and worn-out.
But the captain would not hear of the suggestion for a moment.
“No,” said he; “I mistrust that mutinous chap, Bill Moody, and the lot who sided with him in making a rush for the boats when we struck. I know they would be up to some mischief or other as soon as my back is turned.”
“But there is McCarthy your chief mate,” replied Mr Meldrum, “surely he can take command of the vessel, as he has so often done before, while you have a spell off?”
“Ah, McCarthy, though as good an officer as ever stepped a plank, isn’t myself, Mr Meldrum; and as for Adams, he wants backbone, while Frank Harness is too young a lad for the men to obey him if any difficulty arose. Besides, there are a lot of things to see to that want my supervision, which must be given while I have this breathing time—the boats have to be prepared and provisioned, for instance.”
“Talking of that,” interrupted the other, “I have roused up that lazy steward of yours and set him to work collecting all the tinned meats and cabin stores he can find, and getting them up out of the steerage.”
“That’s right,” said the captain. “It was very thoughtful, and just what I had intended doing myself, only I forgo it! I have got our old friend Snowball, the cook, busy here in the same way, boiling as much salt beef and pork as he can cram into his coppers, so that it may be ready-cooked when wanted and save time. The darkey has got the galley fire in full blast now.”
“A good precaution,” said Mr Meldrum; “but I do wish I could get you to go below. If you like I’ll remain on deck in your stead?”
But, no! Captain Dinks would not hear of leaving the deck until the fate of the poorNancy Bellwas settled for good or ill; and there he remained amidships—the mates sticking by him and lending a willing hand so as to inspire the crew with an equal energy—superintending the constant pumping operations which were necessary to keep the water from gaining, one watch at a time being engaged solely on the task. Others were preparing the longboat and jolly-boat for service, which was a tedious job, for the gunwales and bottom planking of both had been damaged greatly by the knocking about they had sustained since leaving England, even if they had been properly seaworthy then—a very problematical point, for many of the boats of merchant ships which carry passengers on distant voyages are never taken off the chocks or tested from year’s end to year’s end, in spite of all marine codes and Passenger Acts or Board of Trade ordinances to the contrary, and Mr Plimsoll’s effort notwithstanding!
When Mr Meldrum got below again he found that matters had quieted down in the cuddy. Mrs Negus, persuaded at last that the ship was not immediately going to engulf herself and her darling boy, had been induced to take some refreshment—Snowball sending in a splendid hot supper by the direction of the captain, as the regular routine of the meals in the cuddy had been somewhat revolutionised through the calamities of the vessel. If she had any scruples, Mr Lathrope set the good lady a praiseworthy example in looking after the necessities of the inner man.
“S’pose we air gwine down to Davy Jones’s Locker,” said the American, with a comical twinkle in his cunning grey eyes; “thar’s no reason why we shouldn’t go with a full stummick as well as one like an empty meal sack, hey? Look at me, marm. I treats it philosopherically, I dew, fur I find thars nothin’ like feedin’ to keep up a coon’s grit.”
Mrs Major Negus murmured something about “somebody” being “shockingly vulgar,” but, whether inspired by Mr Lathrope’s “philosopherical” remark or not, she could not resist a second helping of some capital “lobscouse” which the darkey cook had dished up most appetisingly; after which the good lady retired to her cabin for the night in much more cheerful spirits.
Florry’s cut head was easier, too, and by Mr Meldrum’s directions she and Kate turned in comparatively early. They really both wanted a good night’s rest, and their father was not long in following out his own precept, advising Mr Lathrope to do likewise, to which he was nothing loth; so that, soon after eight bells had struck, all the occupants of the saloon were buried in repose and the ship quiet—with the exception of an occasional tinkering sound from the main-deck, coupled with the “clink-clank” of the chain-pumps and the wash of the waves past the sides, all of which were almost inaudible aft.
About four bells in the morning watch, Mr Meldrum awoke; and, without disturbing any of the others, he rose and went on deck.
He seemed to have a presentiment of something happening.
It was quite dark now, the stars having gone in and the sky become clouded over; while the wind had changed and was blowing in short sharp gusts from the southward, which, with the chopping sea, made the ship labour a good deal, taking in lots of water forward. She seemed to bury her head in every wave, her bows being so depressed from the fore compartment being full; and this compelled the crew in consequence to work double spells at the pumps, which caused much grumbling, for the men were almost dead beat, although Captain Dinks still kept them hard at it.
The disaffection had almost reached a head before Mr Meldrum came up, on account of the captain keeping the port watch, in which was Moody and two of his special chums—at the unpleasant task, without allowing them a turn off below, as he had done the other watch, the members of which, however, had had their spell of duty before “all hands” had been called, and thus were fully entitled to the relief. But, the grumblers, in considering their own grievance, did not recollect this, and the appearance of the passenger, whom some of them were already inclined to dislike from something Ben Boltrope had dropped of his being a naval man, and the fact of his now ranging himself alongside of the captain, as if to support his authority, brought matters to a crisis.
“Spell ho!” shouted Bill Moody defiantly, dropping his arms and striking work. “I’m hanged if I pump another stroke! The blessed old hulk can go to the bottom as soon as she likes.”
“Nor I,” exclaimed another, likewise leaving off. “Nor I!” chorused half a dozen more; and, in a second, the pumps were at a standstill.
Adams, the second mate, who was in charge of the men on the main deck—Mr McCarthy and Frank Harness having been sent below by Captain Dinks along with the starboard watch—stood meanwhile, staring aghast at the delinquents and not knowing what to do, “like a stock fish,” as Mr Meldrum thought, looking on the scene.
It was a critical moment.
Captain Dinks, of course, hearing the steady “clink, clank” of the pumps stop, knew that something had occurred, and guessed the cause; but he waited to hear what the second mate would say before he interfered, nudging Mr Meldrum to call his attention, although the latter was already listening with keen interest.
“Do, my men,” they could hear Adams entreat the rebellious gang, “do put your hearts into it and start work again! It won’t be for long, you know.”
“A cursed sight too long for me!” said Moody, interrupting him with a coarse laugh. “You aren’t a going to come over us with your soft sawder, nor the skipper neither! I, for one, ain’t agoing to have any more o’ this slave-driving work! Why should we sweat our hearts out trying to keep the old tub afloat and drive her to shore, when we can reach there quite as well in the boats, without half the trouble? I votes for quitting her at once—what say you, mates?” and he turned round to the others, seeking their support.
“Aye, aye!” shouted several voices together with acclamation. “Let us have no more pumping or slaving; but quit the ship at once and leave the cussed thing to sink. To the boats! To the boats!”
Captain Dinks thought he had allowed the matter to go far enough. The time for action had arrived, and he was ready.
“Hold!” cried he, in clear ringing tones that penetrated fore and aft the vessel and which could be heard above every other sound, advancing to the top of the poop ladder and drawing a revolver from his pocket as he spoke. “The first man who touches either of those boats without my orders, I’ll shoot like a dog!”
At the first sound of his voice the men had stopped speaking, and now there was a dead silence in which you could have heard a pin drop. Not a movement was made by any of the men—all standing still as if turned to stone.
“Do you know that what you are doing, men, is rank mutiny?” continued the captain, taking advantage of the occasion. “Return to your duty at once, however, and I’ll think no more about it. What I am making you do is for the good of us all, and I wouldn’t give you a moment’s unnecessary work if I could avoid it!”
“But,” interposed Bill Moody.
“Ah, I thought it was you, you scamp, ever trying to foment discord amongst the crew—a lazy hound, always grumbling and skulking, you’re not worthy the name of a sailor—you are only a thing aboard a ship! I’ll soon settle your reckoning, my hearty!” And, little man as he was, Captain Dinks sprang down the poop ladder in one bound; and, dashing up to where Moody was standing, knocked him senseless to the deck with a blow from the butt end of the pistol which he held in his hand right across his temples.
“There!” exclaimed he, when the ringleader of the gang was thus disposed of, kicking his body on one side and spurning it with his foot. “That’s the way I deal with mutineers! Now, man the pumps again, my lads, and set to work with a will. As Mr Adams told you just now, it will not be for long that you’ll have to stick at it, for we’ll soon be able to beach the vessel, and then your task will cease!”
Cowed by his summary treatment of Moody, rather than encouraged by his words, the men started pumping again, although without any heartiness, clink-clanking till daylight, when they were relieved by the other watch and went below, taking Moody with them—that worthy having regained his consciousness after a time, in consequence of the water in the lee scuppers, where he was lying, washing over him and acting more efficaciously than the application of smelling-salts or sal volatile would have done under other circumstances.
Before the mutineer went below, however, he turned his scowling face towards the poop, the blood all streaming down from a rather ugly cut on the left temple, and shook his fist in the direction of Captain Dinks, although the latter did not see the gesture, for his face was turned at the moment to the binnacle.
But, Mr Meldrum saw it.
“You’ll have some more trouble yet from that fellow!” said he to the captain, relating what he had seen and telling how Moody looked.
“Pooh!” exclaimed the captain. “He’s only a bully and a lazy grumbler; and all bullies and grumblers are curs at heart!”
“Ah,” said the other, “but those sort of sneaking chaps are just as likely to knife you as not when your back’s turned, though they would be afraid to face you pluckily, like a man.”
“Let him knife away,” replied Captain Dinks. “That is, if I give him the chance! I fancy he’ll remember that little tap I gave him just now; and if he gives me any occasion for it he shall have another!” The skipper then went away laughing, but Mr Meldrum, from the vindictive look he had seen on the man’s face did not think it a laughing matter at all.