Chapter Nine.
A Water-Spout.
Then, the next instant, a wild frenzied roar of joy echoed fore and aft the ship, making the Josephine quiver almost down to her bottom timbers.
“Hooray!”
I could scarcely believe my ears; but, as I looked up in surprise and wonder I caught sight of Jake’s ebony face all aglow with delight, his eyes rolling about like a vessel in a heavy seaway and his mouth expanded from ear to ear. He was evidently about to indulge in one of his usual huge guffaws when especially highly pleased and unable to contain himself, as he evidently was now.
“Golly, dat splendiferous!” he cried out in ecstasy. “Um beat cock-fightin’ nohow!”
“Bravo, well done!” I heard Captain Miles’s voice exclaim also at the same time, with a joyous heartiness utterly indescribable.
“Why, what has happened, Jake?” I asked, quite puzzled.
“Wat happen’, eh, Mass’ Tom? I tell um sharp! De sailor man lick de shark arter all! Him dibe under de fis; as um go to grab him; an’ den, dey catch de nasty debbil one big crack wid um boat-hook, an’ pull Mass’ Jackson into der boat. Golly, I’se so berry glad, Mass’ Tom! I’se a’most cry wid joy, for true.”
And then, not content with this expression of his feelings, the sympathetic darkey, sliding down from the rigging where he had been perched, looking on at the terribly exciting scene taking place a moment before in the water, tumbled himself over on the deck in paroxysms of merriment, perfectly unable to restrain himself and keep still.
When I now looked over the side of the ship, which by this time was hove-to, the gig, with Jackson seated in the stern-sheets by Mr Marline, was close under the port quarter, and the rescued swimmer with those who had saved him in the nick of time were just preparing to come on board.
Presently, Jackson and the mate mounted the side-ladder amidst a perfect ovation from the crew, all hands cheering like mad and pressing forwards to shake the fist of him whom they had never expected to see again. After this the gig was veered astern and hoisted up once more to the davits, and the Josephine, bearing round and filling her sails, again resumed her north-east course on the starboard tack. The job of making the port anchor snug inboard was completed later on, when the men had sobered down somewhat from the excitement which had reigned through the ship from the moment Jackson had first fallen overboard—it having been an awfully anxious time throughout his peril by drowning, his hairbreadth escape from the shark, and his ultimate rescue.
Later on, Moggridge told me how the poor fellow escaped from the very jaws of death.
Jackson, he said, when he became aware of being pursued by the bloodthirsty monster, instead of losing his presence of mind, as most men would have done under the circumstances, remained perfectly calm and collected, having once before had an encounter with a shark in his native element.
He swam on steadily towards the ship, apparently unmindful of his enemy; but, he carefully kept his weather eye opened, and when he saw the brute going to turn on his back in order to make a snatch at him, he at once dived under the shark’s body, thus circumventing his attack. Before the monster could recover itself and make a fresh onslaught, Moggridge said, the chief mate caught it a pretty tidy whack over the head with a boat-hook, while Jackson was hauled into the gig at the same time by the other men.
It was a wonderful escape, however, and nothing else was talked of on board for days after.
Strange to say, too, the shark, as if determined not to be easily balked of its prey, followed the ship steadily; and this fact, of course, kept the incident fresh in our minds, even if we had been at all inclined to forget it, the hideous creature’s bottle-like fin ever perceptible in our wake being a constant reminder!
“He’s bound to hab somebody for suah,” said the captain’s mulatto steward Harry, who by the way was the person who had given out that agonised shriek which I had fancied to be poor Jackson’s death knell. “Shark nebber follow ship for nuffin’!”
“No,” observed Captain Miles grimly; “this beggar sha’n’t at all events, if I know it!” and he paced up and down the poop, as if revolving the matter in his mind.
This was the third day after the affair had happened, and the captain was quite incensed at the shark’s pertinacity; for, morning, noon, and night, whenever we logged over the side, there could be seen the sea-pirate’s long sinewy body, floating under our stern and always keeping pace with the ship whether she was going fast or slow—although, as we had little or no wind, the latter was generally the case.
“I fancy, Mr Marline,” said the captain, soon after replying to Harry’s rather frightened observation, the mulatto being very timid and of a cowardly nature, as the fact of his fainting when the cow invaded the cabin would readily tell—“I say, Mr Marline, I think it’s time for us to give that joker down there a lesson, eh?”
“Perhaps you’ll find him too artful to take a hook, cap’en,” answered the mate. “He seems to me an ‘old sojer,’ from the look of him and the regularity of his movements. Just see him now looking up, as if listening to what we were saying!”
“Well, we’ll try him anyway,” said Captain Miles, telling Moggridge to bring the shark hook aft, as he wished to attempt the capture of our unwelcome attendant.
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the boatswain, going forwards and presently returning with a large steel hook, much about the same size as those they use in butchers’ shops for hanging meat on. A piece of chain was attached to this by a swivel instead of rope or a line, which, although good enough for other fish, the saw-like teeth of the monster of the deep would quickly have bitten through.
“Is the tackle all sound?” asked the captain.
“Aye, aye, sir; sound enough to catch a whale,” responded Moggridge, proceeding to bait the hook with a four-pound piece of salt pork which completely concealed the barbs; and then, a stout half-inch rope having been fastened on to the end of the chain, the whole apparatus was thrown overboard close to where the shark was patrolling the water under our stern.
He sheered off a bit on hearing the splash; but afterwards soon swam up to where the baited hook was towing in our wake, smelling at it cautiously as if to see whether it was advisable for him to bolt the savoury morsel or not. Then, with a disdainful swish of his screw-like tail, he turned round in the water and resumed his station further astern, as if he saw through our attempt to entrap him, and despised it.
“I thought so,” said Mr Marline. “He’s too old a bird to be caught by chaff. You won’t hook him in a blue moon!”
“Don’t you be too cocksure of that,” retorted Captain Miles. “Sharks, I have noticed, frequently resemble cats in the way they will nibble at a bait, and pretend they don’t care about it, when all the while they are dying to gobble it down—just in the same manner as you’ll observe pussy, if you offer her a nice bit of meat, will sniff and turn away her head as if rejecting the morsel with disdain, affecting to make you believe it beneath her notice, only the next moment to abstract it slily from your hand, glad enough to get it! You’ll see presently, Mr Marline, that our friend there will go at the pork again, I’ll bet anything.”
“All right, cap’en,” replied Mr Marline. “I only hope, I’m sure, that your anticipation will prove correct;” but, from the sly quizzical smile on his face and the dry way in which he spoke, I don’t think the mate believed in our hooking the ugly brute, all the same.
After a little time, I noticed two small fishes coming up towards the bait and poking their pointed noses into it as if taking observations, and I called Captain Miles’s attention to them.
“Oh, that’s a good sign,” said he. “Those are pilot-fish, which always accompany his majesty Mr Shark in the way of aides-de-camp, as you call those smart gentlemen in gay uniforms who are usually seen prancing about the general at a review of troops ashore. Whenever you see the little chaps, the shark himself is never far off, for they precede him as his scouts to warn him of danger as well as tell him if there’s anything worth grabbing in the offing. If it wasn’t for them I believe he’d fare rather badly, as his own sight is bad—fortunately for poor fellows that fall in the water in the way Jackson did t’other day!”
“But, captain,” I remarked, “they must be very bad guides if they do not tell the shark about the hook.”
“Aye,” he replied; “something like ‘the blind leading the blind,’ eh? Still, you know Moggridge has taken care that the bait carefully conceals the snare within, and the pilot-fish are none the wiser. See them now!”
As I watched, I noticed first one and then the other of the little fish smell at the piece of pork, making their observations apparently, after which they swam back to the side of the shark, where they remained for a moment on either side of his snout, as if they were making their report upon the tempting object and giving their master all particulars.
Then the shark, with a fluke of his tail, also advanced closer to the bait, which just then, by a twist of the rope attached to it, the boatswain jerked away.
This was enough for Master Shark, who, thinking he was going to lose the coveted morsel, at once sheered alongside of it, turning over on his back and opening his terrible-looking cavern of a mouth in the same way I had seen him do when he tried to catch poor Jackson. The recollection of that made me shudder all over!
The next moment the monster had bolted both bait and hook, as well as a couple of feet of the chain; but when he turned to sheer off again he was “brought up with a round turn,” as sailors say, by the rope tightening suddenly, the jerk almost making him turn a somersault in the water.
He was not altogether captured yet, however, and his struggles to get free were tremendous. Really, his jaws must have been pretty tough to have not given way under the furious flings and writhings he made to release himself; for the strong half-inch manilla rope that held him tethered was stretched like a fiddle-string, its strands all quivering with the strain upon it.
First to one side of the ship and then to the other the brute bounded in turns, making the sea boil around him like a whirlpool, until finally, after half an hour’s fight of it, he gave in and lay quiet, although not dead yet by any means.
As soon as the shark began to flounder about, I noticed that the pilot-fish went away, leaving him alone in his extremity; and on my mentioning this to Mr Marline he took the opportunity of pointing a moral for my especial benefit.
“It’s just the way in the world, Master Tom,” said he. “Foolish companions lead many a young fellow into a scrape; but as soon as they see him in the mess into which they were the means of inveigling him, they scuttle off, abandoning him to his fate and probably laughing at his troubles too.”
“Aye,” put in Captain Miles, wishing also to improve the occasion; “and if that shark had not been so madly impetuous in rushing at the hook he would never have been caught; in the same way as somebody told me of a certain young gentleman, who, not looking before he leaped, as the proverb says, and only thinking of the end he had in view, galloped down a hill and came to grief—getting a tumble which laid him up for weeks!”
“Oh, Captain Miles,” said I, “you don’t think I’m a shark, do you?”
“Well, not quite so bad as that, youngster,” he replied with one of his cheery laughs; “but, quite as impetuous sometimes, eh, Master Tom?”
I made no answer to this thrust, knowing there was some truth in it, my mother having frequently to call me over the coals for doing things on the spur of the moment, which, as she was aware, I always regretted afterwards.
This thoughtless impulse is a great fault, as I know to my cost; for, it has led me into many a scrape—sometimes to the danger of my life!
While we were talking the shark was still struggling in the water; but when he grew tolerably composed, only an occasional splash of his tail showing that he yet lived, the men began to make preparations for hauling him on board.
The bight of a rope was made into a running knot and hove round the body of the animal; when, the men hauling away with a will at the other end of the line, which was passed through a snatch-block hung in the rigging, the captive was soon bowsed up to the mizzen chains.
No sooner, however, was he got out of the water than the hampered monster appeared to be imbued with fresh vitality, lashing his tail about and splintering the wood-work of the bulwarks as if it had been brown paper; but when the slip-knot was drawn tighter this controlled his frantic movements a bit, and Jackson, who was allowed precedence of the rest of the sailors from his previous acquaintance with the savage brute, then advanced with a sharp butcher’s knife, which he had borrowed from the cook, in order to give his old enemy his quietus.
Taking care not to get within reach of either the jaws or ponderous tail of the shark, he leaned over the side of the ship and stabbed it in the neck; after which, with two long slashing cuts he severed the head, which quickly splashed down into the sea under the counter, sinking to the bottom at once from the mere weight of the bone it contained. Jackson then proceeded, by the captain’s orders, to rip open the animal’s stomach; but it was found to contain nothing digestible but the piece of pork which had led to the brute’s capture, the shark evidently having been lately on short allowance.
When, however, Jackson extracted the hook from the bait, he started back suddenly as if he had received a blow, clutching hold of the shrouds to steady himself.
I thought he was going to faint.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Captain Miles; “what’s the matter?”
“See here!” replied the young sailor, holding up in his hand something dark and soft looking, with a bit of ribbon fluttering from one end.
“Well, what is it?” repeated the captain.
“My cap,” said Jackson solemnly; “and, but for the mercy of God I also might have been in the same place!”
It gave us all a thrill, I can tell you, the sight of this old cap, which must have floated off Jackson’s head when he dived to escape the rush of the shark. The brute had swallowed it, no doubt, greedily, thinking it had got the owner.
As for Jackson himself, when he clambered up over the side again and came inboard, his face was as white as a table-cloth. I did not hear him, either, joking about the deck all day afterwards in his usual way; although the young sailor, besides being the smartest of the hands at his work, had hitherto been the life of the crew, always laughing and chaffing the others, as well as being the first to lead a song on the fo’c’s’le of an evening. The startling discovery of his cap in the shark’s stomach, coupled with the reflection that, had not Providence intervened in his behalf, he might have also been swallowed up, seemed to have completely sobered him for the time.
The other hands, however, were not much affected by the incident; and, presently, when the bight of the rope round the shark was unloosed and the body allowed to drop overboard, Moggridge sang out in a triumphant voice: “Now we’ve got rid of Jonah, we’ll have a shift of wind at last!”
“Why does the boatswain say that?” I asked Captain Miles. “What had the shark to do with the weather?”
“Well, you see, my boy,” he answered, “sailors are generally superstitious, and they always think that killing a shark brings good luck of some sort. Now, the best sort of luck we can have would be a good stiff south-wester, or something of that sort, to drive us on our way across the Atlantic, as we have experienced nothing but light breezes since we left the islands, barely making five hundred miles’ distance from Sombrero. We’ll never get to England at this rate in a month of Sundays.”
Unlike most prophecies referring to the weather, which, as a rule, must generally be made after the event to be correct, that of the old boatswain, curiously enough, turned out a true one, for, although we had been only favoured with light winds from the time of Jackson’s escape from the shark and all the while the ill-fated brute followed in our wake like a phantom of evil, not many hours elapsed after we had captured the animal before a strong southerly breeze sprang up. This, shifting round later on more to the westwards, came right astern of the vessel—thus enabling her to spread studding-sails and sky-sails, exposing every rag of canvas she could carry from truck to deck.
The wind, too, fortunately, was not a cat’s-paw either, like the shifting airs we had previously had, for it lasted us ten days at one stretch, carrying us well to the south-east of Bermuda and almost more than half-way to the Azores.
During all this time, no very remarkable incident occurred on board, save that, whether owing to change of air or through some deficiency of their native diet, three out of the half a dozen turtle, which Captain Miles was hoping to carry home for the lord mayor’s banquet, died one by one. They were hove over the side in the same fashion; and, as I watched their shelly backs floating astern, I could see flocks of sea-birds settle down on them, evidently rejoicing in having such an unexpected feast. A pig, too, was killed one day, supplying us in the cabin with savoury roast pork, which was an agreeable change from the salt beef and boiled fowls that were our ordinary fare—although, as the hen-coops were becoming rapidly untenanted, I should not have much longer to complain of any monotony of the latter item of our diet, I thought.
But, if there was nothing to chronicle of any stirring character I enjoyed the voyage immensely, being as happy as the day was long.
It seemed like paradise to me, sailing on and on before the genial western wind over the wide blue sea, with an azure sky above unflecked by a cloud in the daytime and studded with a glorious galaxy of stars at night that made the heavens look like a casket of jewels.
Before long, I became quite a sailor too, being able to make my way aloft to the cross-trees without help, and I was learning by familiarity every rope whose name Moggridge had before taught me; for, when the captain saw that I was careful through his repeated cautions, and also had Jackson to look after me, he withdrew the embargo he had placed on my mounting the rigging. Indeed, he was kind enough to let me do duty as an “extra hand,” as I loved to consider myself, in Mr Marline’s watch, or when he himself was on deck.
Another great delight I had consisted in going out on the bowsprit and fishing for bonitoes and dolphins with a bit of red or white cloth tied to a hook, in the same way as one goes “reeling” for mackerel in the Channel; and many a savoury supper, cooked surreptitiously by Jake in his friend the cook’s caboose, had I on the sly at night in the fo’c’s’le, when Captain Miles thought I had turned in and was snug asleep in my bunk!
Day after day passed alike, with the exception, of course, of Sundays, when the captain read prayers on the poop to the hands clustered round, all dressed out in their best shore clothes, and with the decks especially holystoned in honour of the day—the ship the while making some couple of hundred miles every twenty-four hours on her onward way, while scarcely shifting a sail or altering a brace from week’s end to week’s end.
It was getting on towards the end of August, the wind having continued fair from about the middle of the month and the weather being all that could be desired; when, one morning, that of our fifteenth day out from Grenada, I recollect, I noticed that Captain Miles looked rather anxious after coming on deck, shortly before our breakfast hour, “eight bells,” according to his usual custom when everything was going on all right.
He first glanced aloft, sailor-like, to see that everything was correct with the rigging and the sails all drawing, and then he cast an eye forward, noting the orderly arrangements there; finally, walking across to the binnacle in order to observe what course the ship was steering, and asking Mr Marline, who had charge of the morning watch, how she was going.
“Eight knots good, sir, last heave of the log,” promptly said the mate.
“That’s all right,” observed the captain; “but, I don’t like the look ahead. It seems to me as if there’s going to be a change.”
“Indeed?” replied Mr Marline; “I haven’t noticed anything at all unusual. The wind has kept steady from the westwards ever since I came on the poop at four bells, the same as we left it overnight.”
“But, the glass is going down, Marline,” rejoined Captain Miles; “and don’t you notice the sea is getting a bit cross off our port bow? It strikes me we’ll have a shift of wind presently from the eastwards, if nothing more. However, we oughtn’t to grumble, for ten days of such fine weather is rather unusual in these latitudes, you know, at this time of year.”
“Yes, certainly,” replied the mate; “we’ve made good use of the time, too.”
“Aye, that we have,” replied the captain. “I fixed our position last night by a couple of lunars.”
“And I suppose it corroborates your observation of yesterday, eh?”
“Pretty nearly,” said Captain Miles; “calculating for the distance we’ve run since, I should think we’re somewhere about 30 degrees North and 52 degrees West.”
“Well, that’s strange!” exclaimed Mr Marline. “We’ve got to the limit of the north-east trade without having once the benefit of it from the day we started, the winds having been south-east and southerly till they shifted round to the westwards!”
“So they have,” said the captain; “still, that has been all the more lively for us. But I don’t like this change brewing up. Look at the clouds now!”
“Ha, they’re getting up at last!” replied the other. “I see you were right, the change will come from the eastwards.”
Up to now it had been a beautifully bright morning, the sky without a scrap of vapour to obscure its lucent expanse, and the sea lit up with golden sunshine that made it appear bluer somehow or other; but, even while Captain Miles and Mr Marline were speaking, a low bank of cloud arose along the eastern horizon, and this, spreading gradually up towards the zenith, soon shut out the half-risen sun and his rays, casting a sombre tinge at the same time on the ocean below.
“All hands shorten sail!” shouted the captain, and the studding-sail halliards being let go by the run, the Josephine, which a moment before had looked like a bird with outspread wings, had these latter clipped off in a jiffey, the light sails bagging with the wind like balloons as they were hauled down; and, soon afterwards, the booms projecting from the yard-arms on which they had been rigged out, were sent below and laid with the other spare spars along the bulwarks in the waist.
While the crew were busy at this task, the strong breeze, which but a short time before had filled our canvas, gradually died away until there did not seem to be a puff of air stirring, the larger sails now hanging loose or else flapping idly against the masts.
Captain Miles, however, did not stop merely at taking in the studding-sails, for the royals were next furled as well as the topgallant-sails; and then, under reefed topsails and courses, in addition to her jib and spanker which were still set, he awaited what the weather might have in store for his vessel. An experienced seaman, such as he was, when forewarned, as in the present instance, by a falling barometer, always prepares for eventualities of the worst possible character, never leaving anything to chance or neglecting to take proper precautions. By not doing so many a gallant ship with all hands on board is lost through the carelessness of bad navigators.
The cloud in the east, meanwhile, rose higher in the heavens, showing a bit of clear sky for a moment at its base, when it began to travel towards the ship at great speed, but in a very eccentric fashion, whirling round and looking as if it were dancing on the surface of the water.
“I can’t make it out,” said Mr Marline in a puzzled sort of way. “There must be a good deal of wind at the back of it; but, why doesn’t it keep a straight course towards us, eh sir?”
“It’s a whirlwind, I fancy,” replied Captain Miles; “I’ve seen a good many in the South Atlantic, near the African coast, although never one before in these latitudes so far from land.”
“Are they dangerous at all, captain?” I asked, rather anxiously.
“No, Tom, not unless you got in the vortex of one, when it might twist the spars out of a ship perhaps, though I never saw any mischief done by one myself. Mind your helm,” added Captain Miles to the man at the wheel, whose office at present was a sinecure, for the ship was almost becalmed and the rudder swaying to and fro from port to starboard as it listed. “If the wind catches us suddenly we may be taken aback, and I want you to be ready when I give the word.”
This made the sailor who was “taking his trick” all alert, instead of lounging over the spokes as he had been doing previously, listening to our talk.
Presently, a quick puff of air came from the west again, and the Josephine began to gather way; but almost in an instant afterwards the wind shifted right ahead, coming down with the cloud, and the yards were at once braced round, the vessel being headed towards the north.
The cloud approached rapidly now on our weather bow; and, as it got nearer, we could see that its bottom edge, which was attenuated to the proportions of a slender pillar of vapour, seemed to be united to the water, the sea, where it joined the surface, being greatly agitated, foaming up in columns of spray that were circled round and round and then drawn up in corkscrew fashion into the denser body above.
“Why, it’s a water-spout!” exclaimed Mr Marline in great surprise.
“So it is,” said the captain, a bit startled and perplexed too. “Look sharp, Marline, and see to the hatches being battened down and the scuppers open; for, if the blessed thing bursts immediately overhead, it will flood our decks with a deluge of water worse than if we had shipped a heavy sea.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered the other, scuttling down the poop-ladder to attend to these orders; but he had hardly left the captain’s side ere a terrific gust of wind struck us, coming from the same direction as the water-spout.
The instant after, the wind shifted round to the opposite quarter, and then a series of squalls, hot and strong, seemed to assail us from almost every point of the compass at once.
“Hands shorten sail!” roared out Captain Miles again, using the palms of his two hands before his mouth for a speaking trumpet. “Be smart, men! Some of you brail up the spanker here and man the jib downhaul. Right! Now, away aloft the rest of you; we must have those topsails close-reefed. Cast-off the halliards—there—cheerily, men; that’s the way to do it!”
No sooner were the hands down from the topsail-yards, however, than he had them up again to take in the courses, which had already been clewed up and were now furled; the Josephine lying-to under close-reefed topsails, with the fore-topmast staysail set to keep her in command of her helm.
She did not look so gay as she had done earlier in the day, with all her snowy plumage spread before the favouring breeze; but, she was all the better prepared to battle with the elements, and now steadily and sturdily awaited their onset.
The struggle was not long delayed.
Closer and closer came the whirling water-spout, surrounded by columns of misty spray and accompanied by the fierce wind. The sea was agitated with violent eddies that rocked the ship to her centre every moment; and, above the shriek of the constant squalls tearing through the rigging, and the splash of the boiling water at the foot of the terrible cloud column, we could distinguish a peculiar hoarse sucking noise, as if the whole herd of Neptune’s horses were drinking their fill, and letting us know about it, too!