Chapter Eleven.
The Wreck of the “Martha Brown”.
This last fatality had the rather curious result that of the entire crew who left Baltimore in the Martha Brown only the cook and the cabin boy now survived, the remainder of the existing crew consisting of Cunningham, myself, and the boatswain, carpenter, and sailmaker of the Zenobia; it also resulted in the destinies of the ship and those aboard her, and the interests of poor old Ephraim Brown’s widow, suddenly falling into my inexperienced hands. This being the case, I decided to consult with Cunningham at once as to the proper steps to be taken under the circumstances, although my own view of the matter was perfectly clear and decided. And that view, stated briefly, amounted to this: that my obvious duty was to do the very best I possibly could for Mrs Brown, and that, knowing quite clearly what the skipper’s intentions were, I could not do better than carry them out in their entirety. It was in this form that I laid the matter before Cunningham, asking him to give me his opinion upon it, and requesting him to suggest a better course if he could think of one; but he fully agreed with me that, the schooner being practically full of sandalwood, and being also within three weeks’ sail of Canton, we could not do better than proceed to our destination, dispose of our cargo, invest the proceeds in tea, and then be guided by circumstances—or, rather, the state of the market—as to whether we should take the tea to Europe or America, ultimately returning to Baltimore, and there rendering an account of our stewardship. And upon this understanding being arrived at, the voyage to Canton was continued.
It was on the afternoon of the third day following the suicide of the skipper that the Trade wind, which up to then had been blowing with its usual steadiness, began to weaken, and upon consulting the barometer I found that the mercury was falling rather rapidly. At the same time I became aware that the aspect of the firmament was undergoing a subtle change, the clear, brilliant blue of the sky gradually fading to a colourless pallor, as though a succession of veils of white gauze was being drawn across it, while the clouds, sailing up out of the north-east, paused in their flight and began to bank up in the south-west quarter. These changes continued throughout the afternoon, the result being that the sun gradually became blotted out, and was entirely obscured about an hour and a half before the time of sunset. And with the disappearance of the sun the wind sank until it died away altogether and the schooner lost steerage way, while the heavens assumed a dark, lowering appearance, and the atmosphere became close, suffocating, and so oppressively hot that even the thinnest and lightest of clothing was an almost unendurable burden, and every article was dispensed with that could be discarded without outraging decency. But although the wind had completely died away, the swell did not diminish; on the contrary, it seemed if anything to increase, for the schooner rolled and plunged most outrageously, shipping water over her rails, her bows, and even her taffrail, the water seeming to heap itself up suddenly and fall aboard her in the most extraordinary and unexpected manner. It was evident that a change of weather was impending, and, as the mercury clearly indicated that the change would be for the worse, I caused the schooner to be stripped just before darkness set in, leaving only the reefed foresail and fore staysail set, under which short canvas I believed she could not come to much harm, let the impending weather be what it might.
A quarter of an hour after the time of sunset the darkness was so intense that for all practical purposes we might as well have been blind, for at a distance of ten or twelve feet from the illuminated cabin skylight it was literally impossible to see one’s hand when held close before one’s eyes; while between the darkness and the violently uneasy motions of the little hooker it was positively dangerous to attempt to move about the decks. As for staying below, it was out of the question, for the cabins were like so many ovens; therefore, after supper was over, Cunningham and I both returned to the deck, and, seating ourselves on the wheel grating beside the lashed wheel, chatted together while the engineer smoked pipe after pipe.
It happened to be my eight hours in, that night; therefore, since it was hopeless to think of sleeping in my bunk on such a hot, breathless night, I stretched myself out on the wheel grating, shortly after eight bells of the second dog-watch, and was soon fast asleep, despite the hardness of my bed, while Cunningham sat near me, keeping such a lookout as was possible under the circumstances.
It was seven bells, or within half an hour of midnight, when Cunningham awoke me.
“Sorry to disturb you before your time, old chap,” he apologised. “I have been hoping that it might not be necessary to awake you until eight bells, but—just look at that sky! What on earth does it mean; and what is going to happen?”
I had started up, broad awake, the instant that Cunningham’s hand touched my shoulder, and had at once become conscious of the very extraordinary and portentous aspect of the sky; it was therefore quite unnecessary for me to ask what he meant. When, soon after the expiration of the second dog-watch, I had stretched myself out and fallen asleep on the wheel grating, the darkness had been as opaque as that of Egypt when Moses stretched forth his hand and there was a thick darkness in all the land for the space of three days, during which the Egyptians saw not one another, neither rose any from his place; but now, the moment that I opened my eyes, I saw that the plunging schooner, the restless, heaving surface of the ocean, and the overarching dome of the sky, packed with enormous masses of slowly working cloud, were all suffused with ruddy light, such as might be emitted by a volcano in furious eruption. Yet no flaming crater was anywhere visible, nor did the light flicker or wax and wane, as it would have done had it issued from such a source; it was perfectly steady, and after I had gazed upon it for a time I could come to no other conclusion than that it emanated from the clouds themselves, which glowed with the colour of iron heated to a low red-heat. I had never before beheld such a weird, awe-inspiring spectacle, but as I gazed upon it the memory came to me that I had somewhere read of something similar, and I also remembered that it had been described as the precursor of a hurricane, or some similar atmospheric convulsion.
“I am afraid it means a heavy blow, a hurricane—or typhoon as they call it in these seas,” said I: “and I am very glad that you called me, for I will take the hint and have the schooner battened down forthwith; also this is the first time I have ever witnessed such a phenomenon, and I would not have missed it on any account. You might as well turn in now, if you care to do so,” I added, “for I see it is not far off eight bells, and I shall not attempt to sleep again.”
“Thanks, no—not if I know it!” answered Cunningham. “Like yourself, I have never seen anything of this kind before, and I intend to see all that I can of it now that I have the opportunity. It began more than half an hour ago, the ruddy glare growing out of the inky blackness so subtly and imperceptibly that it is difficult to say precisely when it began, but I became conscious of it when I got up to strike six bells. Then it brightened so rapidly, and seemed so altogether unnatural, that at length I began to feel jumpy about it, and decided that the time had arrived when you ought to be called.”
“Quite right,” I agreed. “Well, if you won’t turn in, perhaps you will be good enough to keep a lookout here while I go for’ard and see to the battening down. There is not much to be done, but the little that needs doing might as well be done at once.” And therewith I left him and staggered along the squirming deck to the forecastle head, where Chips and Sails were perched upon the windlass bitts, out of the way of the water that was constantly slopping in over one bow or the other, talking together in a low-pitched murmur, and staring awestruck at the incandescent sky.
“Well, Chips,” said I, “have you ever seen anything like this before?”
“Ay, sir, I seen the same thing once before, when I was in the Tenedos, one of the China tea clippers,” answered the carpenter. “We was in the Injin Hocean at the time, homeward-bound. The skipper—Cap’n Bowers, his name was—was down with dysentery at the time, and the mate was one o’ these here chaps that thinks they knows everything. He ’lowed that the weather signs didn’t mean nothin’ partic’lar, and wouldn’t so much as take in the skysails—because, d’ye see, we was racin’ home with another ship, and Mister Mate reckoned he wasn’t goin’ to be scared into shortenin’ down just because the weather looked a bit unusual. Consequence was that we was on our beam-ends about a hour a’terwards, with all three masts over the side and the ship threatenin’ to go down under us. A nice busy twenty-four hours we had of it a’ter that, I can tell ye, Mr Temple, and it ended up in our crawlin’ into Table Bay under jury-masts, and lyin’ there five solid months before the new spars comed out to us and we re-rigged the old barkie!”
“How did it come down upon you then—in the shape of a sudden squall?” I demanded.
“Well, no, not exactly that,” answered the carpenter. “It began wi’ little whifflin’ gusts that comed up from nowhere partic’lar, and was gone again afore you could say Jack Robinson. They comed moanin’ along, filled the canvas with a smack, and—there was an end o’ that one. Then another’d come along same way, do the same thing, and go floatin’ away down to loo’ard. It happened ’bout half a dozen times, and then, afore we knowed where we was, away come the hurricane, screamin’ and yellin’ like Billy-oh. ‘Halyards and sheets let go, fore an’ aft!’ yells my noble Mr Mate—Bryce his name was; but, Lor’ bless you, sir, afore we could cast off the turns from the belayin’ pins the gale had hit us, and there we was, on our beam-ends, wi! the deck standin’ up like the side of a ’ouse.”
“Well,” said I, “that can scarcely happen to us, I think, with the small spread of canvas that we are showing. But it will be bad enough when it comes, I doubt not; so go below and call Murdock, the cook, and the cabin boy, and say I want them to come on deck, as I am about to batten down the fore scuttle. And when eight bells comes, you will have to go aft and stretch yourselves out on the cabin lockers, for the forecastle will be closed until this breeze is over.”
It took us but a few minutes to batten down the forecastle hatch securely, for there was a good tarpaulin cover that had been specially made to fit it; and when that was done I set our scanty crew to work—myself lending a hand—to secure the galley and the boats with extra lashings, so that they might not be washed away: and when we had finished, the cook entered his galley and shut himself in, to finish the night there.
As it happened, we were none too soon in the completion of our preparations; for scarcely had we finished when the ruddy glow in the sky began to die out again, and as it did so the first of those scuffling puffs of which Chips had spoken came whining and moaning across the surface of the ocean from the south-west, filling our scanty spread of canvas with a resounding clap and then passing away toward the north-east, its track across the glistening surface of the ocean being marked by a dimming blur like a catspaw, which swept down toward us, touched us for an instant, and was gone again. This occurred some seven or eight times at decreasing intervals, each succeeding rush of air being of a few seconds’ longer duration than the preceding one, and coming with greater strength and spite, thus enabling us at last to get steerage way upon the schooner and partially turn her stern toward the point from which we expected the outfly to come. And when presently it came roaring and howling and screaming down upon us, with such a medley of sound as might be expected from a legion of unchained furies, our port quarter was turned towards it, with the schooner in motion and paying off before it. Yet, even so, it swooped down upon us with such appalling violence that the little vessel careened until her lee sheer-poles were buried and the water was up to the coaming of the main hatch. But with way on her, her helm hard up, no after canvas set, and the hurricane dragging at her stout foresail, she could not help paying off, and after a long minute of heart-racking suspense, during which we momentarily expected her to keel-up with us, she suddenly righted and went flying away dead before the wind, with the water boiling under her bows up to the level of her head-boards.
One of the Martha Brown’s good points was that she steered as handily as a little boat. I therefore had no difficulty in keeping her dead before the wind without assistance, although Cunningham stood by to lend me a hand should I chance to need any help. Also the water, apart from the boiling foam into which its surface was scourged by the hurricane, was perfectly smooth, the smallest suggestion of a wave crest being instantly seized by the wind and swept away to leeward in the form of fine, salt rain; indeed, the air was so full of spindrift and scudwater that I believed, even had it been daylight, we could not have seen farther than about two, or at most three, lengths from the ship. As it was, with the outfly of the hurricane that weird, unnatural, ruddy light of which I have spoken almost immediately died out from the sky, leaving the night as pitch-dark as before, save for the ghostly gleam of phosphorescent light which arose from the storm-swept ocean, and which gave the water, as far as it could be seen, the appearance as if moonlight were shining up through it.
When we had been scudding for a full quarter of an hour before that raving, screaming, howling fury of wind I began momentarily to expect and look for some indication that the worst was over, and to hope that the wind would moderate sufficiently to allow us to heave the schooner to before the sea should acquire height and weight enough to render the operation dangerous, for now every mile that we ran was carrying us just so much farther from our destination. But as time went on the gale, instead of moderating, seemed to increase in strength, until I began to wonder how much longer hemp and pine and canvas could endure the terrific strain to which our foremast, its rigging, and the reefed foresail were exposed. Still, although the mast was bowed forward in a curve that seemed to have approached perilously near to breaking-point, and although the shrouds and backstays were strained until they were hard as iron bars, everything was, so far, holding splendidly, and the schooner was rushing along at a speed which I was firmly persuaded she had never before approached.
At length, after I had been at the wheel nearly three hours, Cunningham insisted on relieving me: and, to speak truth, I was more than glad to accept his offer, for notwithstanding that it was by that time blowing harder than ever, and that the wind continued to scoop up the water in such vast quantities that the air was thick with salt rain, a high and unpleasantly steep sea had gradually risen, chasing the schooner and constantly threatening to poop her, or broach her to, so that at length, in order to escape the one fate or the other, it became necessary to keep the wheel perpetually in motion, now to port and anon to starboard; and a couple of hours of that kind of work, combined with the heavy strain upon one’s nerves, is enough pretty well to tire out the strongest—moreover, I was drenched to the skin. Therefore I gladly made way for Cunningham, and, having first gone forward and directed Murdock to go aft and stand by the wheel, so that he might be at hand in the event of Cunningham needing any assistance, I returned aft—finding it necessary, by the way, to go down on my hands and knees and literally crawl along the deck, in order to make headway against the buffeting of the wind—and went below to my cabin, where I proceeded to strip off my wet clothes and subject myself to a vigorous towelling preparatory to donning a dry rig and my mackintosh.
Taking my time over the operation, I had proceeded so far as to have donned a dry undervest and a pair of thin duck trousers; and, having rolled the legs of these up to my knees, was in the act of unhooking my long mackintosh coat from its peg, when a terrific shock hurled me violently against the cabin bulkhead, and the next instant a deafening medley of sounds, compounded chiefly of the crash of breaking spars, the wild yells of Cunningham and Murdock, the seething smash of a perfect mountain of water on the deck, the splintering of the glass in the cabin skylight and the pouring of a deluge of water down into the cabin, smote upon my ears.
Partially stunned by the violence with which I had been dashed against the bulkhead, I made no immediate effort to rise, but remained passively where I had fallen, stupidly striving to realise what had happened, until a tremendous upheaval of the schooner’s hull, by which she was hove completely over on her beam-ends, and a rush of water that half-filled my cabin awoke me to the consciousness that a catastrophe of some sort had overtaken us, and I scrambled awkwardly and with difficulty to my feet, pulling myself up by means of the knobs of the drawers under my standing bedplace, when another furious shock again upset me, and I fell squatting into the water violently surging to and fro athwart my cabin. By this time, however, full consciousness of the serious character of the situation had come to me, and as the schooner was again hove up and almost on to her opposite beam-ends, I let go my hold of the drawer-knobs and went swirling out through my stateroom door, lifted fairly off my feet by the rush of water, and found myself swimming for my life in the main cabin, in the midst of a squadron of cushions that had floated or been flung off the top of the cabin lockers. Then another mountainous sea swooped down upon and overwhelmed the hapless schooner, another deluge poured into her cabin through the smashed skylight and the companion, and had not a backwash of water just then swept me into the companion way and stranded me on the ladder, so that I could grasp the handrail, I should certainly have been drowned, for that second downpour filled the cabin to the level of the beams.
As I pulled myself up and secured a footing on the companion ladder I felt the hull of schooner again soaring aloft, up, up, until it seemed to my excited imagination as though the little craft was being hove right up among the clouds and at the same time being capsized. Then came the thundering crash of another mountain of water upon her deck, accompanied by the sound of rending woodwork as the companion cover parted company and was swept away; a whole Niagara of water poured down through the opening upon my devoted head, and as I clung to the handrail with the grip of a drowning man the schooner struck a third time, with such terrific violence that I fully expected the hull to go to pieces about my ears. But no, the stanchly built little hooker still held together, although I knew that her bottom must be stove in like a cracked egg-shell; and presently, when I felt that I could not hold my breath for another second, I found my head once more above water, and saw dimly, close above me, the hole in the deck where the companion cover had once been. Another moment and I had again found footing on the ladder, and, bruised all over and aching in every joint of my body, I crawled out on deck.
Whether it was that my eyes had at last adjusted themselves to the darkness, or that the darkness was less profound than it had been, I know not, but as I emerged from the companion way and secured a footing on deck I became aware that I could dimly perceive my immediate surroundings. The first object to catch my eye was the stump of the mainmast within a few feet of the spot where I was standing, and the instinct of self-preservation at once prompted me to make a dash at it and fling my arms round it, in order that I might not be swept away by the next sea which should break aboard. And as I stood there gasping for breath and staring about me I discovered that I could not only dimly perceive my immediate surroundings, but that
the entire hull of the schooner was visible as an all but shapeless black patch in the midst of a madly leaping chaos of swirling foam, which gleamed ghostly white in the light of its own phosphorescence. It was still blowing as furiously as ever, and the air was thick with spindrift and scudwater, which blotted out everything outside the radius of some thirty fathoms on every side; but the schooner now seemed to be in comparatively smooth water, and I was not long in guessing at the reason, for, glancing to windward, I could dimly see, a few fathoms away, a great wall of spouting, leaping white breakers, evidently marking the position of the reef upon which we had struck so violently, and over which we now seemed to have beaten, for there were no further shocks. But imperfectly as I could distinguish objects in the darkness, I could still see enough to convince me that the schooner was a complete wreck and full of water, for both masts were over the starboard side, still attached to the hull by the rigging, while every scrap of bulwark, boats, galley, in fact everything above the level of the deck, was swept away.
A single glance sufficed me to grasp these details, and then I turned my gaze inboard again, wondering whether any of the others had survived that awful passage across the reef. And as I did so the sound of someone vomiting close at hand reached my ears.
“Who is that?” I demanded, looking in the direction from which the sound proceeded, and as I spoke a figure uphove itself from among the raffle of the port main rigging, which lay athwart the deck, and a voice which I recognised as Cunningham’s responded.
“That you, Temple?” it asked. “Ugh! Ouch! Ow! By the Piper, this is awful! I seem to have swallowed half the Pacific Ocean! Ow! Ugh! I—Aw! I say, old chap—auch!—where the dickens are we, and what has happened, eh?”
“Where we are I’ll be hanged if I know,” I responded, “for all about here should be open water, according to the chart. But it isn’t, for we’ve just beaten over a reef and in all probability smashed the bottom of the poor little hooker to matchwood in the process. And now the best we can hope is that there is land of some sort close under our lee, for if there isn’t we are in a very pretty pickle. Have you seen anything of the others?”
“Yes,” answered Cunningham, “Murdock is here; but I’m afraid he is badly hurt, poor chap, if not killed outright. When the schooner struck, he and I were swept for’ard by the first sea that broke aboard, and the next thing I knew, when the water had gone, was that I was clinging to this rigging here with one hand, and that I had hold of somebody’s leg with the other, that somebody being Murdock. But he was—and still is—insensible, and I am afraid he must have been violently dashed against some of the wreckage, so I lost no time in making him fast to the first loose rope’s end I could find. But I say, if the schooner’s bottom is stove, as you say, I suppose she’ll sink in a few minutes, won’t she?”
“Sink! With her hold full of sandalwood? Not much!” I retorted. “Still, I hope there is land not far away, for I have no fancy for washing about the Pacific on a crazy, waterlogged hulk, and that is the condition of the Martha Brown at this moment. But where are Chips and Sails and the boy? I’m afraid we shall never again set eyes upon poor cooky, for he was in the galley, and that, I see, is gone, together with everything else that was on deck.”
“Yes,” said Cunningham, “it went, I think, with the first sea that broke aboard us when we struck the reef. And I don’t know what has become of the others. I seem to remember having seen two figures emerge from the companion way while I was busy with Murdock here, but I don’t know what became of them. I wonder whether we could do anything for the boatswain—the sea is no longer breaking aboard, and—”
“Yes, of course,” said I. “Where is he? We can at least discover whether or not he is alive.”
“Here he is, among all this raffle,” answered Cunningham. “The first thing, I suppose, will be to get him clear of it, and then—”
“Well, I am afraid that is about all that we can do for him at present,” said I, as I moved across the sluggishly rolling deck toward Cunningham. I stooped beside him, and at his direction lifted the tangle of rigging beneath which the boatswain was lying, while he proceeded to cast off the lashings that had saved the inert body from being washed overboard. Then between us we dragged the man out to a clear spot on the deck, where Cunningham knelt, supporting the head and shoulders, while I tore open the front of the thin vest and laid my hand upon the broad, hairy chest. The heart was beating, although but feebly; yet as Cunningham continued to support the man in a sitting position the beats gradually became stronger, and presently, with a groan, consciousness returned, and, heaving himself over on his side, with an ejaculation, poor Murdock began to vomit violently, as Cunningham had done, having evidently, like him, swallowed a great quantity of salt water. For perhaps five minutes the paroxysm continued with severity; then, having rid himself of most of the salt water, the man, between groans, began to ask where he was, and then, as memory returned, informed us that he had received a violent blow on the top of the head which had knocked the senses out of him. Fortunately there was no wound; and after a while the boatswain was able to sit up unassisted, with his back against the stump of the mainmast. And then, having placed him in a tolerably comfortable position, we were free again to take cognisance of things in general, when we became aware of the fact that the schooner, although still rolling heavily with the movement of the water about her, had taken the ground; and upon looking away to leeward I thought I could perceive, through the flying spindrift and against the darkness of the sky, a darker shadow which could scarcely be anything else than land.
When next we turned to Murdock, to enquire whether there was anything more that we could do for him, we found that he had fallen asleep, which was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to him. We therefore left him to finish his nap and fell to pacing the weather side of the deck, between the main rigging and the taffrail, comparing notes as to our experiences; and while we were still thus engaged we became aware of two things. The first of these was that the gale was breaking, while the second was that the dawn was at hand, for far away to leeward of us the sky was paling, down to a certain point, beneath which the shadow lay as dark as ever, but was assuming, even as we stood, a certain definiteness of shape, ultimately resolving itself into the outline of what seemed a distant hill, with deeper shadows between ourselves and it, which, in turn, developed into a low, bush-crowned cliff, out of the base of which a sandy beach presently grew as the light gathered strength.
Then, quite suddenly, the clouds to windward and overhead broke up into detached masses, between which a few stars twinkled transiently before they vanished in the fast-growing light of the new day; and the cloud masses drove away to leeward and disappeared, revealing a sky of the deepest, richest ultramarine, softening away down in the eastern quarter to a tone of the palest and most delicate primrose, against which the outline of the distant hill stood out, sharp as though cut out of paper, so deeply purple as to be almost black. Then, the light coming so swiftly that the eye scarcely found time to note the multitudinous changes of tint accompanying it, the sky behind the hill flushed from palest primrose to rich, glowing amber; a few evanescent shreds of cloud midway between horizon and zenith blushed rosy red at being caught unawares by the sun’s first rays, then vanished; a pencil dipped in burning gold outlined the crest of the distant hill for a few seconds, and then the upper edge of the sun’s disk, palpitating with living light, floated up into view beyond the ridge of the hill, and in an instant the whole scene, save the beach, which still lay in the shadow of the cliff, became a picture of brilliant, dazzling light and colour. To seaward, about two miles distant, was the creaming surf, sparkling diamond-like as it plunged down upon the reef over which we had driven and then leaped and spouted thirty feet high into the clear air before the wind caught it and tore it into mist; while shoreward there stretched a line of curving sandy beach, about a mile in length, forming part of the shore of a shallow bay into which we had driven and wherein the schooner now lay stranded. The beach was distant about half a cable’s length from us, and was backed by a rocky cliff averaging about fifty feet in height, crowned by a growth of low scrub, over the top of which appeared what now seemed to be a low, flat-topped hill, distant perhaps three miles inland.
The beach immediately to leeward of the schooner was strewed with fragments of wreckage, among which we recognised the galley and some fragments of the boats; but what gave us the greatest satisfaction of all was to see two apparently inanimate figures—those of the carpenter and the sailmaker—rise slowly to their feet, walk down to the water’s edge, stare intently in our direction under the sharp of their hands, and then wave their hands frantically in response to our waving, as they recognised the fact that we were aboard the wreck, and for the present, at all events, safe. Then they put their hands trumpet-wise to their mouths and evidently hailed us; but the roar and the crash of the surf on the reef were so deafening that it was impossible for us to catch a word of what they said, and, recognising this, they presently turned and walked up the sand until they came to a dry spot, where they sat down, with the obvious intention of awaiting events. As for Cunningham and myself, we could do nothing but abide in patience where we were until the surf upon the beach should moderate sufficiently to render it safe for us to swim ashore, the wreck being swept so clean that, without breaking up the deck, there was not a fragment of timber left out of which to construct a raft.