Chapter Fourteen.
In Dire Peril.
Jake’s voice seemed ever so far away in the distance, and there was a confused sort of humming, buzzing noise in my ears; while some heavy weight on the top of my head appeared to be pressing me down, although I struggled frantically to free myself.
It was all in vain, though.
I was whirled round and round in an eddy of the sea; and soon my efforts ceased.
Then, all at once, when almost the sense of suffocation had passed, I felt a hand grasp my collar at the back of my neck; and, oh, gracious heaven! I was dragged above the surface and drew once more a breath of air. I took in a gulp of water with this; but, in spite of the water, the air was the sweet essence of life and I breathed again!
I had been in a dream before—a terrible dream; now I came to myself, and my recollection returned.
The buzzing sounds that had previously echoed through my brain resolved themselves into the hoarse shouts of the crew of the Josephine; the exclamations of the sailors being mingled with the roaring, crashing break of the waves as they washed over the wreck, and the creaking and rending of the timbers of the poor ship, while, nearer yet to me, I could distinguish the cheering cry of faithful Jake:
“Hole up, Mass’ Tom, um got um safe now. Hole up an’ take good breff; we’se all right, an’ ebberybody safe!”
At the same moment that he spoke Jake lifted me up on something which I could feel with my feet, and I opened my eyes.
At first, I was almost blinded by the sea-water which had got into them, and the salt spray which continually dashed over my head; but, in a minute or two, I was able to see where I was and grasp the situation.
The ship was lying over on her starboard side, with her decks submerged up to the hatches, and her masts horizontal on the surface of the sea; but, the whole of her port side was clear out of the water, and, although the waves were breaking over this, still the major part of the quarter and a portion of the poop were almost high and dry in the intervals between the following rollers that ever and anon swept up to their level.
On this after part of the ship, Jake had managed to clamber up, lugging me along with him; and, as I looked round, I could recognise Captain Miles and Mr Marline, as well as several others of the hands, who had sought such a vantage-ground of safety.
Away forwards, the Josephine was completely buried in the huge billows that were constantly surging over her; but here, too, clinging on to the main-chains was another group of sailors, amongst whom I could make out the tall figure of Jackson, with Cuffee and Davis close beside him.
Captain Miles perceived me almost as soon as I saw him.
“Ah, there you are, Tom!” he cried. “Thank God you are not lost! I made a hard grab at you when the ship heeled over, but missed you; and thought that the skylight hatch carried you away overboard when it lifted.”
“Me watchee him sharp, sah,” explained Jake. “I’se see de squall comin’ an’ run aft for tell, an’ den I clutch hole Mass’ Tom, an’ here we is!”
“You’ve saved your young master then,” exclaimed the captain; “so, Tom, you’ve got to thank the darkey instead of me! But, how many of us have escaped?”
As he said this, Captain Miles glanced about and appeared to be reckoning up the list of the crew on his fingers, for I could see his lips move.
“Marline, you’re all right, eh?” he went on presently, speaking out aloud.
“Oh, yes, I’m here, thanks to Providence,” said the first mate with almost a sob in his voice. It told better than words his gratitude to the power on high that had preserved him.
“And Jackson, I see, with Davis and Cuffee,” continued the captain, running through the names of the survivors as far as he could make them out.
“There’s Adze, the carpenter, too, in the main-chains, with those two German sailors, Hermann and Gottlieb; while there are five more of the hands alongside me,” said Mr Marline looking round, too, and taking stock.
“But, where’s Moggridge?” asked Captain Miles, missing the boatswain at that moment and not seeing him anywhere. I felt my heart sink at the thought that he was gone.
“Here I am, your honour,” however, sang out the old fellow, climbing up over the stern gallery. “I almost lost the number of my mess; but I’ve managed to cheat Davy Jones this time.”
“That makes, with Master Tom here, just sixteen souls, out of eighteen we had on board, all told,” said the captain. “Anybody seen the steward?”
“No, he isn’t here, poor fellow,” replied Mr Marline. “He was below in his pantry at the time the squall struck us, and must have been drowned before he could scramble out.”
“There’s only one other, then, missing,” said the captain. “Count the hands again, Marline.”
The first mate did this; and, then, it was found, on hailing Jackson in the main-chains—the sea at present making a breach between us and dividing our forces—that the other sailor was a man named Briggs, who had been ailing for some days past. He had been in his bunk in the forecastle when the ship capsized, so his fate was almost as certain as that of Harry, the mulatto steward.
All things considered, though, it was a great mercy, from the sudden nature of the calamity, that so many of us should have been saved. But for the fact of the accident having occurred in the afternoon, when the majority of the hands were fortunately on deck aft, many more lives would undoubtedly have been lost.
However, albeit temporarily preserved from the peril of a watery grave, our outlook, clustered there together on the outside of the partly-submerged vessel, was a very sorry one; for, the sea was still running high, and the waves were breaking over us in sheets of foam, and, although the sun was shining down and the air was comparatively warm, this made us feel most uncomfortable. Besides, the continual onslaught of the rolling billows necessitated our holding on to everything we could get a grip of, to prevent ourselves from being washed away.
We had to lie along the side of the ship, grasping the mizzen rigging, which attitude was a very wearying one; for, the sea would lift us up as the swell surged by, and then, we had to take a fresh grip, our feet sliding down the hull as the billow retired and the vessel sunk down in the hollow.
“I say, Marline,” called out the captain presently, “as you are nearest the signal halliards, do you think you can manage to run them clear?”
“I’ll try, sir,” answered the other; and Moggridge, who had now crept alongside the mate, helping him, the two contrived to haul out the rope in question.
“Now, who’s got a knife handy?” next inquired Captain Miles.
There was half a dozen replies to this question; but, ere the article wanted could be passed along, the old boatswain had drawn out his from his waistband by means of the lanyard slung round his neck, and was busily employed in cutting up the signal halliards into short lengths of about a fathom each.
“Ah, I see you guessed what I was after,” said the captain noticing this. “If we lash ourselves to the rigging here, it will save us a world of exertion and trouble, besides leaving our hands free for other purposes.”
“Aye, aye, sir, I know’d what you want,” responded Moggridge, and passing down the pieces of rope as he cut them off, all of us were pretty soon well secured from being washed away, each man helping to tie up his neighbour in turn.
“Golly, massa, dis am a purdicafirment!” ejaculated Jake, grinning as usual, and with his ebony face shining with the spray; “I’se ’gin feel want grub—um precious hungry.”
“I am afraid that’ll not be our only want, my poor fellow,” said Captain Miles in a melancholy voice; but rousing himself a minute afterwards he added more cheerfully, “Wait till the sea gets down, and then we’ll try to improve our condition. I wonder, though, how these other fellows are getting on in the chains amidships? Jackson, ahoy!”
“Hullo, sir,” came a faint hail in answer, from amid the breaking seas further on ahead of us, where only a black spot of a head could be seen occasionally emerging from the mass of encircling foam.
“Are you all right there?” sang out the captain.
“We’re alive, sir; but nearly tired out,” replied Jackson in a low weak tone.
“Can’t you try, man, to work your way aft and join us,” urged Captain Miles, comprehending how exhausted the young seaman and his companions there must be. “There’s plenty of room here for all of us, and you’ll not be so much worked about by the sea.”
“The waves are too strong for us, sir,” cried out the other, but his voice now seeming to have a little more courage in it, for he added after a bit, “I think we can manage it, though, if you will make fast the bight of the topsail sheet and heave the end to us. It will serve us to hold on by as we pass along the bulwarks.”
“All right, my hearty,” answered Captain Miles, he and a couple of the sailors beside him doing as Jackson had suggested.
Then, the captain himself, undoing his lashings, seized one of the brief intervals in which the after part of the hull rose above the sea; when, standing on his feet, while his legs were held by the two sailors, he hove the end of the rope towards Jackson, who, clutching hold of it, secured it to the main-shrouds, whence it was stretched taut to the mizzen rigging, thus serving as a sort of life-line by which the men could pass aft.
When this was done, the men with Jackson in the main-chains crept cautiously along the bulwarks, half in and half out of the water, clutching on to the topsail sheet hand over hand, soon joined us on the quarter galley—the young second mate being the last to leave, waiting until his comrades were in safety.
The passage from the one place to the other was perilous in the extreme; for, the waves surged up sometimes completely over the poor fellows’ heads, when they had once abandoned their footing and had only the frail swaying rope to support them against the wash of the water. They were roughly oscillated to and fro, hove up out of the sea one minute and lowered down again into it the next.
It was a wonder some of them did not fall off, getting sucked under the keel of the ship; but, gripping the life-line with a clutch of desperation, their passage across the perilous bridge was at last safely accomplished, when the entire sixteen of us, including my own humble self, were at length gathered together in one group on the counter-rail below the bend of the poop. The new-comers were then lashed to the mizzen rigging like the rest of us, and we all waited with what hope and patience we could for the sea to calm down.
By this time, it was late in the afternoon; and, presently, the sun sank down away to the west in his ocean bed, surrounded by a radiant glow of crimson and gold that flashed upward from the horizon to the zenith.
The wind had died away too, the last violent squall which had been so disastrous to the Josephine, having been the expiring blast of the hurricane; so, although, as I’ve said, the sea still continued to run high, the waves rolled by more regularly and with an equal pulsation, as if Father Neptune was rocking himself gradually to sleep. The old tyrant was evidently; exhausted with the mad rioting in which he had recently been indulging, and the thrashing which the gale had given him!
There was no sleep for us, however, excepting such hasty little droppings off into brief forgetfulness that our worn-out bodies gave way to for an instant; for we were constantly being roused up, almost as soon as our wearied eyelids had closed, by the sudden rush of the spent wash of some broken wave wetting our already wet garments. This banished all thoughts of repose; and, when the darkness of night came on, it was cold and dreary in the extreme, the hours seeming to drag out to the length of a lifetime.
Poor faithful Jake lay close to me so as to protect me as much as possible from the wash of the sea; and I found out, when morning light came once more to cheer us, that he had actually stripped off a guernsey vest, which Captain Miles had given him to save him from exposure on the night of the thunder-storm, and had fastened this round my shoulders in order to keep me warm!
I shall never forget Jake’s thoughtful action, I believe, as long as I live, for it made a great impression on me when I discovered such a striking proof of his devotion; and, as I now retrace the incidents of the past, the incident stands out prominently in evidence of a negro’s brotherly love.
Why, his black skin always seemed white to me ever after. Aye, although born an African, his heart was truer than that of many a European, whose complexion is only a trick of colour!
During the night we were all silent; but, when the sun rose in the east, flooding the sea with the rosy tint of dawn, hope came back to us and our tongues were unloosed—the more especially as the force of the waves had considerably lessened, hardly a scrap of spray being now washed over us, while the blows of the billows against the side of the ship were no longer heard.
The sea really was calming down at last.
God was watching over us!
“Say, captain,” said Mr Marline, who was the first to bestir himself, “do you think there’s any prospect of our righting the ship?”
The captain was asleep, I believe, for the first mate had to repeat his question twice before he could get an answer.
“I’m sure I hope so,” at last sleepily muttered Captain Miles, with a portentous yawn—“only wait till the swell calms down and we’ll see about it.”
“But it is calm now,” rejoined the other.
“Then wake me again when it is calmer,” replied Captain Miles; and then, he turned on his side and proceeded with his nap as coolly as if he were comfortably tucked up in his nice swinging cot in the cabin.
“Well!” exclaimed Mr Marline, “of all the cool, self-possessed men I ever met in my life, you beat the lot!”
He was talking to himself, but the hands heard him, and there was a general snigger all round, the captain’s very composure having given confidence to all. The men believed that he would not have taken things so quietly unless he had some sure hope of our speedy release from such a precarious position.
“He is a rare brave un,” put in Moggridge. “I’ve sailed with him man and boy for many a v’y’ge afore this, and I allers found him the same, calm and plucky in danger, and keeping a stiff upper lip when in perils that frighten other folk. Captain Miles, sir, is a man as a sailor should be proud to sail under—that’s what I says!”
“Eh, what, what?” murmured the captain, half waking up on hearing his name spoken, and lifting his head from between his clasped hands.
“I was a-saying, sir, as how you knew what’s what,” replied the boatswain, “and I don’t know of any other man I’d say sich of.”
“Belay that,” said Captain Miles, rousing up now and rubbing his eyes. “Ah, it’s morning, I see! Well, Mr Marline, and how goes it?”
“As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” answered the other.
“Bother circumstances,” rejoined the captain; “we must make the best of them we can. Now, let us see what’s to be done.”
“Do you think we can right her, sir?” asked the mate repeating his old query.
“Right her? yes, certainly, if we can cut away the masts. She’s not water-logged, and all sound below, I fancy, as far as I can see; for the hatches have been battened down since Monday.”
“But she’s rather down by the head, sir,” said Mr Marline, as the two rose on their feet and proceeded to look round the vessel as well as they could from the top of the poop bulwarks, whence they surveyed her position and surroundings.
“Ah!” exclaimed Captain Miles, “the fore-peak must have been left open when those spare sails were got out, so that she has taken in some water there. Never mind, though, there’s a stout bulkhead separating the compartment from the main hold, and, if there’s no leak below, we’ll be all right.”
“But, the masts have been working the decks all this time,” suggested the mate, “and if the sea has got in through the straining of the timbers we must sink in time.”
“Sink your grandmother, Marline!” retorted the captain, “you forget that our main cargo is rum, which is ever so much lighter than water, and more buoyant. As long as we have that below we’ll float, never you fear! But, the job is to cut away the masts if we can; she’ll never right, of course, till that is done. A pity your rigging was so well set up, Marline! If the sticks had only gone by the board when the squall struck us we’d be all right now.”
“I don’t know that, captain,” replied the other. “If the masts had been badly stayed they would have gone in the height of the hurricane; and then, where would we be now?”
“Not in the Sargasso Sea, I fancy,” said Captain Miles with a hearty laugh. “But we can’t do anything yet, though, till the sea has gone down more. Men,” he added, “keep your pecker up! Providence having watched over us thus far will now not desert us, I am confident, and we’ll yet weather on Mr Marline’s circumstances!”
All hands gave a cheer at this hopeful speech, and the sun having by this time dried our soddened clothes besides warming us, we began to feel more comfortable and easy, the captain’s words giving us fresh courage.
Towards noon, however, the heat brought on a most terrific thirst, which was all the more painful from our not seeing any chance of relieving it; for, although, like the “ancient mariner,” we saw “water, water everywhere,” there was not a drop of the wholesome fluid, as far as we knew, that we could drink.
In this dire calamity, Jackson proved our guardian angel.
“I say, captain,” he called out, after climbing along the bulwarks down into that part of the waist of the ship which was clear of the sea, letting himself swing down by the end of the topsail halliards which were belayed to the side, “there’s one of the water-casks lashed here that did not fetch away to leeward with the rest when she canted over; and it’s full too. If anyone has got a hat, or anything that I can draw off the water in, I will start the bung and we can all splice the main-brace.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Captain Miles. “That’s the best news I have heard for many a day. Here, Marline, pass him down my wide-awake. Mind how you drive out the bung, Jackson, and have something ready to close up the hole again; or else, all the contents of the cask will be wasted ’fore the hands are served round.”
“I’ll take care, sir,” replied the young seaman, who had now turned the end of the topsail halliards into a bight round his body, so that he could swing down in front of the water-cask and yet have his hands free.
Then, taking out a marlinespike, which had caught in the rigging somehow or other, he managed, after several blows on either side of the cask, to start the bung. This, from the position in which the ship was lying, was now horizontal instead of perpendicular; so, as soon as it came out, the water flowed at once into the captain’s wide-awake hat, which Jackson had under the bung-hole, stopping up this again with the cork as soon as the hat was full.
Mr Marline was bending down from the bulwarks above him to receive the strange jug when the other handed it up to him, and he passed it on to Captain Miles, who allowed me to have the first drink.
It tasted like nectar—better than any draught I had ever had before or since!
Captain Miles himself then took a gulp of the grateful contents of his old hat, passing it on to Moggridge; and, when emptied, as it very soon was, the wide-awake was filled and refilled by Jackson until every man had satisfied his thirst—the last to enjoy the water which he had been the means of procuring being the brave young seaman himself, just in the same way as he had been the last to quit the post of danger when helping his shipmates out of the main-chains.
Quenching our thirst gave us all new life; so, later on in the afternoon, Captain Miles set the men to work casting off the ropes as best they could with the idea of freeing the masts. However, we could do nothing without an axe, for no man had anything handier than his clasp-knife, which naturally was of no use in helping to cut away the cordage and heavy spars that kept the ship down on her beam-ends.
What was to be done?
We were all in a dilemma, one man suggesting one thing, and another proposing a fresh plan for getting rid of the masts; when, Adze, the carpenter, who had said nothing as yet, spoke for the first time.
“I left a large axe o’ mine,” he said quietly, as if saying nothing particularly worthy of notice—“I left a large axe o’ mine in my bunk in the fo’c’s’le; and if ary a one can git down theer, he’ll find it on the top side to his starboard hand as he goes in.”
“But, the fo’c’s’le’s full of water,” said Mr Marline, “and a man must be a good diver to creep in there and get the axe under eight or twelve foot of sea! Besides, I daresay it will have been washed away from where Adze put it in his bunk, the lurch of the ship having shifted everything to leeward.”
“It war to leeward already in the top bunk, I tell ’ee,” rejoined the carpenter; “an’, bein’ that heavy, I spec’s it’s theer right enough. Only I can’t dive, nor swim above water for that matter, so it’s no use my going after it.”
“I’ll go, massa captain,” shouted out Jake, who had been listening eagerly to this conversation. “I’se dibe like porpuss an’ swim like fiss.”
“I know that,” said Captain Miles laughing. “I recollect the way you came aboard my ship. But you can try if you like, darkey. If you find that axe, you’ll be the saving of all of us, and give a fair return for your passage, my hearty!”
Jake did not need any further persuasion.
Making his way along the bulwarks, he clambered on to the main rigging, now lying flat across the capsized vessel, until he came to a clear space between the mainmast and the forecastle, from whence the boats and cook’s galley had been washed away. Jumping into the water at this point, he swam towards the spot where he thought the entrance to the forecastle should lie, for the sea was washing about forward, and nothing to be seen above the surface but a small portion of the port bulwarks near the dead-eyes of the fore-shrouds and a bit of the port cat-head.
Jake then dived below the water, disappearing from our view for a few seconds that seemed interminable as we waited.
“I hope he hasn’t come to grief,” said Captain Miles anxiously. “So many things have been carried away and jumbled up in a mass there forwards, that the poor fellow might get fixed in and be drowned, without the chance of saving himself.”
But his alarm was quite unnecessary, Jake rising above the water in another moment and scrambling up into the main rigging, in a very hurried manner, as if something was pursuing him.
His face as he turned it towards us was almost green | with fright, and we could hear his teeth chattering | with fear and cold combined.
“Well,” sang out Captain Miles, “I’m glad to see you out of that hole alive. But, what’s the matter, my man? have you got the axe?”
“N–n–n–no, Mass’ Cap’en,” stuttered Jake, making his way aft again along the bulwarks, “got no axe nor nuffin’. Dere am duppy or de debbil in de fo’c’s’le. Bress de Lor’, dis pore niggah only sabe him life an’—dat all!”