Chapter Nineteen.
Once more in open water.
I slept anything but soundly that night, fearing that, if I abandoned myself too completely to the influence of the drowsy god, I might not awake early enough in the morning to ensure the accomplishment of all that was to be done next day—for we had to hoist the boat, make sail, and traverse some forty-five miles of winding channel through the reef in order to reach open water before darkness overtook us. But although I was astir with the first signs of the coming dawn, I found, upon going out on deck, that Gurney and Saunders were before me. They too, it appeared, had been too anxious to do more than doze restlessly and intermittently through the hot night, and finally, as though by mutual consent, had turned out about an hour before daylight and, after softly pacing the main deck together, chatting and smoking for about half an hour, had gone forward, lighted the galley fire, and proceeded to prepare an early breakfast, in order that we might all be ready to turn-to the moment that we had light enough to see what we were about. When I went forward and looked into the galley—the light from which had attracted my attention the instant that I emerged from the cabin—I was greeted with the mingled aromas of boiling cocoa and frying bacon, as well as with the cheery “good morning!” of the two men who were bending over the galley stove; but I had scarcely had time to exchange greetings with them when the fourth member of our party, awakened by my movements while dressing, made her appearance and promptly assumed charge of the culinary operations. This left the three males of the party free to tackle the more arduous duties of the day; and we forthwith proceeded to unrig the boat and make her ready for hoisting. By the time that this task had been advanced to the point of hooking on and hauling taut the davit-tackles, we were summoned to breakfast, and in high spirits sat down to partake of what we hoped would be our last meal but one before we should find ourselves once more at sea.
The meal over, we proceeded to get the quarter boat hoisted to the davits, which, heavy boat though she was for three men to handle, we soon accomplished with the assistance of a couple of watch-tackles, in the employment of which we had by this time, through much usage, become experts. Then came the loosing and setting of the canvas. We decided that, as before, we would rely upon the three topsails and the fore topmast staysail to carry us to our destination, that being as much canvas as we could conveniently handle; and an hour and a half sufficed us to get these sails set to our satisfaction and braced ready for casting the ship. Then, sending Grace Hartley aft to the wheel, which she was now able to manipulate as deftly as any of us, Gurney and I stood by the fore braces, while Saunders, armed with an axe, proceeded to the forecastle and stood by to sever the hawser by which the ship rode. At the proper moment the word was given, the axe fell once, twice, and we were once more adrift, the ship gathering stern-way and paying off with her helm hard a-starboard and the port fore braces flattened in. She made a stern board until she was heading about south-south-west, when the squared main and mizen topsails began to fill and checked her, whereupon the head yards were squared, the staysail sheet hauled over, the helm steadied, and the old Mercury began to forge ahead, not to stop again, as we hoped, until she should arrive in Sydney Harbour.
And now the most ticklish part of our task lay before us, for we had to navigate some forty-five miles of narrow, winding channel, and negotiate several very awkward places, where the slightest mistake meant disaster, before we should find ourselves once more rising and falling in safety on the swells of the open Pacific. But we had talked the matter over a dozen times or more before reaching this stage of our adventure, and knew exactly what was best to be done. We therefore proceeded forthwith to do it, for there is no time for hesitation when a ship is under way in narrow waters; whatever has to be done must be done smartly and on the instant. The channel which we had to traverse, and toward the entrance of which the ship was now heading, started by heading due west for a short distance, then it swerved to about south-west, then looked up to about south-by-east, and thence, undulating slightly a point or so east or west, trended south for the remainder of its length. Now, there were two or three short reaches of channel, the longest of them not much more than a mile in length, where we should find the wind shy enough to necessitate the ship being braced sharp up on the port tack to enable her to negotiate them successfully. But it was necessary for one of us to be aloft to con the ship, and as it was obvious that the other two could not brace round the yards of a ship of the Mercury’s size, we were no sooner free of our anchor than, although the ship was at the moment running off square before the wind, we sprang to the braces, and braced the yards sharp up on the port tack, in readiness for the negotiation of the reaches of which I have spoken. For, while the ship would run before the wind with her yards braced sharp up, she would not sail close-hauled with her yards square; and we had therefore settled it that the proper thing to do was to provide for the difficult points at once. By the time that this was done we were so close to the western extremity of the basin, and the entrance of the channel, that it became necessary for me to jump aloft at once, while Gurney relieved Grace Hartley at the wheel, and Saunders stood in the waist, with his eye on me in the fore topmast crosstrees, ready to pass the word from me to the helmsman, from whom I was hidden by the main and mizen topsails.
I am bound to admit that when I reached the crosstrees, and noted the speed with which the ship was sliding along in that perfectly smooth water, under the impulsion of a fine brisk easterly breeze, and observed the narrowness and tortuousness of the channel that we had to traverse, winding hither and thither through that vast expanse of reef, my heart almost quailed within me, and I felt inclined to doubt whether we three males possessed the ability, the skill, the quickness of eye, the readiness and strength of hand, to take the ship in safety through that apparently endless, twisting channel. But the feeling was merely momentary; an old adage flashed into my mind to the effect that one need never trouble about crossing a bridge until one comes to it; also that it is very unwise to meet troubles halfway. I told myself that I would not worry about the difficulties and dangers ahead, but would stand up there in the crosstrees and deal with them, one at a time, as we came to them. And so I did, with the gratifying result that when the sun’s lower rim had reached to within a finger’s breadth of the western horizon the Mercury slid out past the southern edge of the reef and made her first curtsy as she once more dipped to the swell of the open ocean, having triumphantly negotiated and overcome every one of the difficulties of that endless rock-bound channel. I sprang into the topgallant rigging and shinned up to the royal yard, from which elevation I was able to watch, over the head of the main topsail, the great black expanse of reef receding on either quarter, until the sun plunged beneath the horizon in a blaze of purple, crimson, and gold, and then I descended to the deck by way of the backstay, and walked aft to exchange congratulations with the little group of two men and a woman, who stood clustered about the wheel watching the evanishment of that strange rock prison in the fast-gathering gloom of the tropical night. Before descending from aloft I had taken the precaution to fling one long, lingering, all-embracing glance round the horizon ahead, from one quarter to the other, and had pretty well satisfied myself that there were no dangers lurking in the road along which we were going, no white curl of surf to warn us of the existence of treacherous sunken reefs. Our next act, therefore, was to bring the ship as close to the wind as she would lie, on the port tack, lash the wheel, adjust the after braces in such a way that the craft would steer herself, and then all go below to partake of the very excellent meal that Grace Hartley had prepared specially to celebrate the occasion of our happy escape from the reef.
The ensuing fortnight was a period absolutely barren of events, the weather remaining fine and the wind steady during the whole time, so that we had nothing to do but just to permit the ship to drive steadily along to the southward, hour after hour, and day after day, at an average speed of about four knots. It is true that during the course of that fortnight we sighted and passed several islands, at varying distances; and in one case we hove-to for about half an hour to permit a canoe with half a dozen natives to come alongside and barter their load of fruit for a few feet of brass wire and a handful of glass beads. But we determined to anchor nowhere, if we could help it; for we were now all anxiety to reach our destination as quickly as possible. The care of so big a ship was a heavy responsibility to rest upon the shoulders of three men—and a girl, and we desired to free ourselves of it without a moment’s unnecessary delay. And, quite apart from that, the monotony of the thing was beginning to get upon our nerves. For Gurney and Grace Hartley it was doubtless well enough; so long as they could be together it mattered little to them to what length the voyage might be spun out, but so far as I was concerned—and I think I might also answer for Saunders—I was beginning to crave for the sight of fresh faces, the sound of new voices, and the stir and bustle and excitement of life ashore.
At length, on our sixteenth day out from the reef, in latitude 1 degree 42 minutes north, the wind showed signs of failing us; and by sunset, that night, it had fallen stark calm, with a rapidly subsiding swell; yet the sky was clear, the barometer high, and, in short, there was every indication that we were booked for a long spell of calm weather before we should find ourselves to the southward of the Equator. So indeed it proved; for I believe I may say with absolute truth that never, for five consecutive minutes during the ten succeeding days, had we sufficient wind to extinguish the flame of a candle. True, there were occasional evanescent breathings that came stealing along from nowhere in particular, gently ruffling a few superficial yards of the ocean’s glassy surface into faintest blue for a brief two or three minutes at a time, and then vanishing again; but during the whole of that period we never had enough wind to keep our canvas fully distended for a whole minute. Or course, being short-handed, we could not resort to the various devices usually adopted in a fully manned craft for profiting by those transient breathings. The yards were altogether too heavy for us to attempt to swing them to meet every fickle draught of air that we saw coming toward us; it was therefore only the most favourable that we made any effort to utilise; yet, despite this, we somehow contrived to drift daily a little farther south; it might be, perhaps, no more than a mile, or it might rise to as much as five or six miles. Everything depending upon whether the favourable zephyrs happened to hit the ship, or whether they passed her by—sometimes at a distance of only a few yards.
When we first ran into this belt of calm our horizon was bare, neither land nor ship being in sight—indeed we had not sighted so much as one solitary sail since leaving the island; but at dawn on the sixth morning of the calm we sighted the mastheads of a small craft far away down in the southern board, which, upon being inspected from aloft, proved to be a schooner of, possibly, a hundred or one hundred and twenty tons measurement. During the day it became apparent that she was bound to the northward, for she assiduously utilised every chance breath of wind that touched her to work her way in that direction, while we did what we could to make way in the opposite direction, with the result that by sunset we had shortened the distance between us by three or four miles. The succeeding four days were simply repetitions in all respects of the same wearisome, monotonous state of things; yet the way in which the Mercury and the strange schooner insensibly drew ever nearer to each other during that time was singularly illustrative of what could be accomplished in the way of progress by sailing-ships, even in the embrace of what was to all intents and purposes a stark calm, by active and intelligent officers. It is true that we in the Mercury did but little toward the abbreviation of the distance between the two vessels, for the reason already mentioned, yet when the tenth day of the calm dawned the schooner was hull-up in the southern board, some six miles distant from us.
None but those who have endured a long spell of calm in the vicinity of the Equator can have the faintest idea of the deadly monotony of the experience. Day after day comes and goes, bringing a cloudless sky of dazzling blue, in the midst of which circles a merciless sun, from the scorching rays of which there is no escape, even under an awning; for the stoutest canvas seems incapable of completely intercepting the fiery darts that cause the pitch to bubble up out of the deck seams, and heat metal and dark-painted wood to a temperature high enough to blister the hand unwarily laid upon either. Even though an awning be spread, and shelter sought thereunder, those burning rays are not to be evaded; for they flash up from the mirror-like surface of the sea with a power which is scarcely to be distinguished from that exerted by those which fall direct from the great luminary himself. As to going below in order to escape the arrows of the fiery archer, the thing is not to be thought of; for the whole interior of the ship is, at such times, simply an oven, the air of which is too hot to breathe! Under such circumstances with what eagerness does the long-enduring seaman scan the polished surface of the sleeping ocean in search of the little smudge of faint, evanescent blue, the cat’s-paw that betrays the presence of some wandering eddy in the stagnant air which, even though it be too feeble and insignificant to move the ship by so much as a single inch, may at least afford his fevered body the momentary relief of a suggestion of comparative coolness. And how often does the panting and perspiring officer of the deck drag his weary, enervated frame to the skylight in the almost despairing hope that he may detect a depression of the mercury in the barometric tube, giving the promise of a coming change, only to turn away again with a weary, disappointed sigh.
It was under such circumstances as these that, during the forenoon of the tenth day of the calm, Gurney, upon examining the barometer, reported a concavity in the surface of the mercury, which, as we all knew, was the first indication of a tendency to fall; and a falling barometer of course meant a change of weather, which, in its turn, meant wind, from what quarter we scarcely cared, so long as it came with strength enough to fill our canvas and give us steerage-way. Yet the change was long in coming, for the fall of the mercury was so slow as to be all but undistinguishable, while up till noon the only difference that could be detected in the aspect of the sky was a certain subtle thickening of the atmosphere, that robbed the blue of its exquisite clarity, and reduced the sun to a shapeless blazing; mass that could be gazed at without bringing tears to the eyes, although there was thus far no appreciable alleviation of the scorching heat of the rays that he showered down upon us. But there was an added quality of closeness in the air that caused one literally to gasp for breath occasionally, while the slightest exertion—even that of moving from one part of the deck to another—induced instant profuse perspiration. So hot, indeed, was it that with one accord we decided against cooking any food that day, the idea of hot viands of any kind being absolutely repulsive to us all, and we accordingly dined all together upon the poop, under the shelter of the awning, upon such cold food as the steward’s pantry afforded.
It was about four bells in the afternoon watch when the upper edge of a great bank of livid purple cloud began to heave itself up above the north-western horizon; but when once it had risen into sight its progress was rapid—so rapid, indeed, that within an hour of its first appearance it had soared high enough to blot out the sun, to our intense relief, for with the disappearance of the luminary we were at once freed from the scorching of his beams, although the closeness of the atmosphere became intensified, rather than otherwise. Of course there was no mystery as to what we were to expect; we were undoubtedly in for a first-class tropical thunderstorm, with its usual accompaniments of torrential rain and, very probably, a sharp squall of wind that might perhaps last half an hour or so, and, if we were in luck, end in a breeze that would carry us across the Line. The moment, therefore, that the sun was hidden we proceeded to make our preparations for the welcome change, beginning by striking the awning, following this by clewing up and furling the mizen topsail, and winding up by close-reefing the fore and main topsails. This task, which kept us all busy until close upon eight bells (that is, four o’clock in the afternoon), left the ship under close-reefed fore and main topsails and fore topmast staysail, which was snug canvas enough to enable a vessel, even as short-handed as the Mercury then was, to face anything like the weather which we had reason to expect. Meanwhile, as we found time to notice, the schooner had followed our example and, long before our preparations were complete, had been stripped of everything except her boom-foresail.
By the time that our labours had come to an end, and we were once more free to sit down and await the issue of events, the pall of thundercloud had overspread the entire visible heavens, from horizon to horizon, enshrouding the scene in a kind of murky twilight, under which the ocean, undulating sluggishly in long, low, irregular folds, like the breathings of a sleeping giant, gleamed pallid and lustreless as a sea of molten lead. The atmosphere was still oppressively close, but it was no longer as deadly stagnant as it had been during the earlier hours of the day; for, at intervals, the vane at our main-royal masthead, which hitherto had drooped heavy as a sodden deck swab, save for the swaying motion imparted to it by the lift of the ship to the heave of the scarcely visible swell, lifted and fluttered feebly for a second or two, pointing now this way, and anon in some other direction, showing that, away up aloft there, and as yet too high to reach and stir the surface of the sea, the air currents were awakening under the brooding influence of the coming storm. These movements occurred at first at long intervals, and were of the most evanescent character; but the intervals rapidly shortened, and within an hour of the occurrence of the first manifestation of atmospheric movement it had increased to such an extent as to cause our topsails to rustle and fill, or fall aback, for a moment, while, a little later still, we could feel the light breathings upon our faces, and even note their light touch here and there upon the glassy surface of the water.