Chapter Thirteen.
On our Beam-Ends.
Up to now, although we had experienced bad weather for two days and the special gale before which we were driving had lasted some eighteen hours at a stretch, no serious accident had happened on board, the Josephine being as sound and staunch in every way as when she left port, with the exception of losing her mainsail and having her rigging, perhaps, rather tautly stretched.
The galley fire had been put out once or twice by the heavy seas which we took in over the bows, but Cuffee, with the cordial co-operation of his brother darkey, Jake, was easily able to light this again; and the men, having their rations regularly and little or no work to do—save taking their trick at the wheel, when four would have to go on duty together at once—had nothing to grumble at. Everything, indeed, proceeded comfortably enough while the ship was scudding first one way and then the other—“doing diagonals,” as it were, across her latitudes!
Down below in the cabin all had been what sailor’s term “a hurrah’s nest” ever since the gale began, the loose water knocking about the decks having washed all sorts of odds and ends together and kept us always wet; while the rolling of the vessel from side to side, like a pendulum, as she ran before the wind had smashed most of the crockery-ware and glasses in the steward’s pantry, besides causing the benches round the saloon table and the chairs to fetch away from their lashings.
For days past, our meals had resembled amateur picnics more than anything else—whenever we were able to get them, that is, the old regularity of breakfast and lunch and dinner being completely abolished; for the captain and Mr Marline and myself had to take odd snacks and stray bites at various hours whenever opportunity and appetite allowed their indulgence.
Harry, the steward, was at his wit’s end to get things in proper keeping.
No sooner had he cleared up one batch of breakages and made matters ship-shape than over would sway the Josephine hard to port; when, bang would go something else, undoing in one instant the work of hours of labour in putting the place below in order.
“Lor’ a mussy, me nebber get tings right nohow!” he would exclaim, setting to work again; and then, a sea would come floating in over the combings of the cabin bulkhead, tumbling him over and washing him aft amidst the debris, almost drowning the man before he could fish himself up again and set to his task anew. His toil, like that of Sisyphus, was ever being renewed when on the verge of completion.
To me, however, all these little disagreeables seemed immensely jolly; so, whenever the captain or Mr Marline or Harry happened to get capsized in this way down in the cabin during the day, it sent me at once into fits of merriment, the fact of my being washed off my feet as well only adding to the enjoyment of the joke, for I could grin quite as much with my own head in the scuppers and my mouth full of water as I would when the others were similarly situated.
“Bless the boy!” Captain Miles said. “He’s a regular sailor. He laughs at everything.”
And so I did; especially one afternoon, when a sea coming in suddenly so jammed Mr Marline inside an arm-chair, whose seat had given way, that the watch had to be called below to extricate him. The mate took the matter with great good-humour, I may add, only saying to me, “Ah, never mind, Master Tom, we’ll see who’ll laugh best bye and bye.”
Jake used to sneak down on the sly to put my bunk in order so that I might be more comfortable, having, like most pure negroes, a thorough contempt for the mulatto steward. He believed him quite incapable of looking after me properly.
“Him only poor trash, Mass’ Tom,” he would say to me; “he can’t do nuffin’, I’se like to come an’ look after um cabin for young massa, when I’se in watch below.”
Then, the good-natured fellow would scrub away energetically at the floor, deluged with water, and fix up things straight for me; making the place far more neat and tidy in five minutes than Harry the mulatto could have done if he had been all day over the job. He eclipsed the steward in his own line, while proving himself as good as any seaman in the ship.
Jake was a handy chap, indeed, all round, for he was of very considerable assistance to Cuffee in the galley when the stormy weather interfered with the cooking; so, Captain Miles did not object to his coming to look after me in this way. He “winked at it,” as he said.
During the evening of the day on which the wind shifted round to the north-west, the sky somewhat cleared and the night was fine and starlight; but the gale seemed to blow with all the greater vehemence as the clouds dispersed. It increased to the strength of a hurricane towards one o’clock in the morning, when, the fore-topsail and mizzen staysail blowing away, the ship had to content herself with running under bare poles, careering through the water faster than ever. She had certainly never realised such speed since she had been launched.
I was awake when Captain Miles came down at this time to consult the barometer, and I could hear what he said to Jackson, who had accompanied him below for something or other, the two talking together just outside my bunk.
“I’m sure I can’t make it out at all,” the captain said in rather a hopeless way. “Here’s the glass keeping as high as possible, and yet the gale shows no token of lessening. What can it mean?”
“These cyclones are queer things, sir,” responded Jackson. “I was in two while in a China trader, and sha’n’t forget them in a hurry.”
“I could understand it,” continued Captain Miles as if reasoning with himself, “keeping on like this if we were in the Gulf of Mexico now, for it looks like what they call a norther there; but I’ve never heard of one of those winds being met in the Atlantic.”
“It’s something out of the common, sir,” observed Jackson. “It’s a cyclone, or hurricane, if I ever was in one, and I don’t see as how we can do better than we are doing, sir.”
“Well, we simply can’t,” said the captain. “We are running before it as hard as we can with only our bare sticks showing, for the vessel won’t stand a rag of sail; so, it is utterly impossible to lay to and brave it out.”
“Quite so, sir,” responded the other. “All we can do is to carry on and trust to running out of it into calm weather. We ought to have made a long stretch to the southwards by now.”
“So we have, Jackson,” said Captain Miles. “We’re now, I fancy, pretty well back where we lay so long in the calm, although perhaps a trifle more to the eastwards; but, if we run on much further, I’m sure I don’t know where we’ll bring up!”
There the conversation ended and I went off to sleep soon afterwards, although the creaking of the timbers and roar of the sea sounded terrific, making noise enough to drown the sound of everything else. I couldn’t hear a footstep on the deck above me—all was hushed but the terrible turmoil of the elements.
I got up about six o’clock. I knew the hour by striking a match and looking at a little watch my father had given me just before I left home; for, it was all dark in the cabin, the ports and scuttles being closed and the dead-lights in the stern being up, while the doors in the bulkheads were drawn to, so as to keep out the sea from rushing in when a wave came over the forecastle.
Opening one of the sliding panels with some difficulty and pushing it back far enough for my body to get through, I emerged on the main-deck, thence managed to scramble on the poop, where the captain and Mr Marline were standing as well as Jackson, all holding on to the rigging. None of the officers had turned in all night, but I noticed that none of the hands were visible except the men at the helm, the captain allowing the rest to keep snug in the forecastle until they were wanted, for heavy seas were washing over the rails every now and then or coming in from the bows and sweeping the ship fore and aft, so there was no use in exposing the men unnecessarily when there was nothing really for them to do, as was the case now—no sail being set and only the wheel having to be attended to.
Ahead, astern, to the right hand and to the left, the sea was nothing but a mass of foam, while the air was thick with flying scud that was chopped off the heads of the great rolling waves every instant and whirled to leeward by the wind. This seemed sometimes actually to beat down the water and make it level with its tremendous strength, the billows springing up, after each gust, like india-rubber balls that had been pressed flat and then suddenly released, for they spirted up into the air, flinging their crests aloft one brief moment only to be decapitated the next by the sweeping scythe-like blast.
Far and wide, the ocean presented a magnificent picture of awful grandeur and howling desolation.
Above, the sky was of a dull leadenish hue, and there was nothing anywhere to be seen beyond sky and water save the poor Josephine tearing along through the chaotic maelstrom, labouring and groaning heavily as she rolled from side to side, dipping her yard-arms from time to time with each lurch, with the wind shrieking and whistling the most wonderful harp music through the rigging—nothing to be seen but the restless, roaring, heaving sea stretching away, like a boiling cauldron of soap-suds, to where the gloomy heavens met the angry horizon.
At mid-day, more from curiosity than anything else, as we had lost all track of our dead reckoning, Captain Miles had the log hove, when it was found that the vessel under her bare poles was going close on fourteen knots an hour. The force of the wind on her hull and spars was quite sufficient alone to achieve this speed, for the yards were braced square and the helm kept as steady amidships as the send of the waves would allow and the four men in charge of the spokes could manage.
And so, we continued all that day and night, the gale still keeping up to the same pitch when the fourth morning broke, with never a sign of cessation, while the sea was, if possible, rougher than before, causing us to ship the water over our bows continually.
Captain Miles was fairly cornered.
“I tell you what, Marline,” he said towards the afternoon, “I don’t think there is now any possible chance of the wind backing again; so, as she’s taking in such a lot over the bows, we must try and get some sail on her, to rise out of the trough of the sea.”
“I don’t believe the mast will stand a rag, should we be able to hoist without its being blown to pieces,” replied the first mate despondingly.
He seemed to have lost all heart, unlike the captain and Jackson, who were both still brave and cheerful, keeping up the spirits of the men. These latter, I could see, were beginning to lose their courage too, going about their duties with a sort of dogged stubbornness unlike their old ready way.
“Well, we’ll try it at any rate. But, first, we must see to securing the masts. Get up a spare hawser and we’ll rig a fresh stay round the head of the foremast, and then we’ll set the foresail. That will lift her bows out of the water, if it only holds.”
So saying, Captain Miles yelled out for the watch below, and the men presently came out from the forecastle, Davis, the whilom second mate, along with them, the lot shambling unwillingly along the deck to the galley, where they clustered in a body.
“Now, men,” said the captain, “we must try and get some sail on the ship, or else we’ll have all our timbers crushed in forwards by these seas; who’ll volunteer to go aloft and help stay the foremast? It’s risky work, and I don’t like to order anyone to go.”
Not a soul spoke in answer for a minute or so, and then Davis stepped out a pace in front of the others.
For a moment I was lost in admiration of what I conceived to be his pluck; but, the next instant, I perceived I had been too hasty in jumping at this conclusion.
“What do you take us for, Cap’en Miles?” Davis sang out sullenly. “Do you think that men are dogs to waste their lives for nothing? Why don’t you go aloft yourself, if you are so anxious about the job?”
Captain Miles turned quite white, as he always did when his temper was up. He was then ready to dare anything, like most men of a deep nature.
“So I will, you mutinous scoundrel!” he cried; and he was just making his way down the poop-ladder to go forwards, when Jackson, almost jumping over his head, outstripped him, being down in the waist and up to the loiterers in a jiffey.
“Come on, you cowards!” the brave fellow exclaimed, clambering up into the fore-rigging and making for the top. “Who’s man enough to follow me?”
There was no lack of volunteers now.
First one, and then another, scrambled likewise into the shrouds and climbed up after Jackson, only Davis being left below in his glory out of the whole watch.
Even he too was following; but, on Jackson shouting out something about his “not wanting any lubbers to help him,” Davis sneaked back into the forecastle.
The others then set to work vigorously, rousing up the end of a spare hawser, which had been coiled round the mainmast bitts, and securing it round the foremast head. The ends of this stout rope were then hauled aft and made fast to the main-chains on either side, when, a purchase being rigged up and brought to the capstan, the hawser was hove taut—thus serving as a double preventer stay, to support the great strain there would be on the foremast when the fore course should be set, the mast even now bending before the gale although no sail was as yet on it.
“Now, men, loose the foresail!” shouted Captain Miles, much pleased with the sharp way in which the task had been accomplished through the men’s promptitude. “Mind, though, and come down as soon as you’ve done it, for one doesn’t know what may happen!”
“Aye, aye, sir, all right,” sang out Jackson in reply; and under his orders the gaskets were quickly cast-off and the bunt dropped, when the men shinned down the rigging and ran the sheet aft, the sail blowing out like a big white cloud over the forecastle before the tacks could be belayed.
Fortunately, while taking in sail on the night of the thunder-storm, Jackson had caused the foresail to be reefed before being clewed up, and this precaution now stood us in good stead, as, instead of its being spread to its full extent, only a portion of the sail was exposed to the wind. This, however, was quite sufficient; for, small as it was, it tugged at the restraining ropes like a giant endeavouring to free himself from his bonds, flying out from the yards with spasmodic jerks and pulling at the mast in a way that showed that, if the spar had not had additional support, it would probably have been torn bodily away out of the ship.
The Josephine, though, soon felt the difference of having the sail on her; for, instead of now bowing to the seas and taking them in over her head, she rose buoyantly, dashing along, of course, with greater speed than before.
Captain Miles was quite triumphant over it.
“There, Marline, what do you think of that?” he said, rubbing his hands with much gusto. “Didn’t I tell you so?”
“Yes, sir, so you did,” answered the other; “but we’ll wait and see how long it lasts.”
“Bah! it will last our turn,” said the captain, with a laugh at Mr Marline’s obstinate retention of his own opinion. “Anyhow, it has eased the ship already.”
“It hasn’t eased the steering, though,” retorted the mate. “We’ll want six men at the helm if she goes on jumping like this. She’s worse than a kangaroo now.”
“Better leap over the waves than under them, having a ton of green water come over our bows every minute. Steady, there!”
“Steady it is, sir,” replied Moggridge, who was acting as quartermaster.
“Keep her so, and mind to let her off when she seems inclined to broach to. I think we’ve seen the worst of it now, and can pipe down to dinner.”
“I’m sure I sha’n’t be sorry to have a fair mouthful to-day,” said Mr Marline with a melancholy smile. “I haven’t known what a good square meal was since the gale began, and think I could do justice to one now.”
“So could I,” replied the captain; and he went below to give Harry the steward some especial orders on the subject, the result being that the last pair of fowls occupying the nearly tenantless hen-coops were removed screaming to the cook’s galley, to reappear an hour afterwards on the cabin table at the first regular dinner we were able to sit down to together for four days. The ship, although racing on still before the gale, was now riding more easily and rolling less, while no heavy seas came dashing aft from the forecastle to wash us all up in a heap pell-mell into the stern-sheets, as had hitherto been the case at meal-times—a moving mass of legs and arms, crockery-ware, savoury dishes, and table furniture in general!
When I again went on deck, the ship was going beautifully, tearing through the water like a racehorse and parting the waves on either side of her bows as if she were veritably ploughing the deep, the crests of the sea rising in foam over the fore-yard and floating in the air in the shape of spindrift and spray far astern.
The sky, too, had somewhat lost its leaden hue, clearing towards the zenith, where one or two odd stars could be seen occasionally peeping down at us through the storm rack that flew overhead like scraps of fleecy wool. This cheery prospect told us to be of good courage, leading us to hope that if we only waited patiently we might expect fine weather bye and bye.
At nine o’clock, the greater portion of the heavens was quite unobscured, the moon shining out, although looking pale and watery and with a big burr round her that showed the still unsettled condition of the atmosphere; the wind, strange to say, continuing to blow with almost as great force from the north-west as when it began, nearly forty-eight hours before.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have a nasty night of it,” said Captain Miles, who had just then come up from below with his sextant. “Still, I’m glad to see our old friend the moon again, however greasy she may look. I haven’t been able to take an observation since Monday; so we’ll see what a lunar may do in the way of fixing our position.”
Just then, there was a break in the haze that had caused the watery appearance of the fair orb of night; and Captain Miles, taking advantage of the opportunity, took his angles, a sight of two of the constellations also helping his calculations, and giving him data to work upon. He then went down to his cabin again to work out the reckoning.
“Guess where we are, Marline?” he said when he came up for the second time. “I don’t think you’ll be able to tell within a degree!”
“Somewhere between the forties, I should think, with all this scudding about north and south,” replied the other.
“Well, I make it that we’re just about 33 degrees 10 minutes North, and 41 degrees West longitude. What do you think of that, eh?”
“Never!” exclaimed the first mate.
“But, it’s true enough,” returned Captain Miles. “I assure you I’ve tested my reckoning in every way, those star altitudes enabling me to correct my lunars. Yes, Marline, you see we did not lose so much by carrying on to the north as you fancied we would; and this blustering north-wester has now taken us almost eight hundred miles in the very direction we wanted to go. If we had lain to, as you wanted at first, we should now have been considerably to the southward of our position, and would probably have had to beat up northwards again; whereas now, as soon as the gale is blown out, we’ll be right in the trades for home.”
“And won’t we touch the Gulf Stream, then?” I asked.
“No, my boy, thank goodness, we’re a long way from that; but if you’re anxious to see the Gulf-weed I told you about, we’re now in its native home, a region called the Sargasso Sea.”
“The Sargasso Sea!” I repeated. “I never heard of that before.”
“No, I don’t suppose you have,” replied Captain Miles in answer to my implied question. “It is a name applied to a calm expanse of the ocean between the Gulf Stream and the Equatorial Current, and is called so from the Sargassum, or Gulf-weed, which is continually found floating there—that is, when the wind is not too strong, as now, to blow it elsewhere. You’ll see plenty of the stuff as soon as the gale lulls, which it must do now, I think, in a very few hours.”
“Are you going to carry on still before it, sir?” asked Mr Marline.
“Of course,” answered the captain. “The ship is sailing easily and not straining herself, as she would do if lying-to; and we can’t run into any harm following the same course till morning. I intend to work the gale in the same way as a friend of mine once treated a runaway horse. It first started off to please itself, and then he made it keep up its pace to please him; so, as the wind has chosen to blow us along at its own sweet will all this time, it shall now drive the ship at my pleasure. What do you say, Master Tom, eh?”
“I say it’s a very good plan, captain,” I replied laughing.
“Well, my boy, I’ll tell you of another good plan, and that is to go below and turn in, as I purpose doing. Mr Marline,” added the captain to the first mate, “please take the first watch. I’ll relieve you at midnight; I don’t think there’ll be any change before then.”
With these words, Captain Miles, who had been on deck almost continuously now for two days and nights, went down to the cabin to have a couple of hours of much-needed repose; and taking his hint as an order, good-humouredly as it was spoken, I followed him at once.
Nor was I anything loth either to go to my bunk; for I had eaten a hearty dinner which made me feel drowsy. After I had turned in, too, there being no excitement to keep me awake, and the ship being quite safe, there being now every prospect of the gale coming soon to an end, I slept like a top—Harry the steward having to wake me again next morning to tell me that breakfast was ready, and coming twice to shake my bunk before I would turn out.
When I subsequently went on deck, I could soon see that the weather had altered for the better.
Although the sea was still rough, the clouds had cleared away from the sky entirely, not a speck of hazy vapour being discernible anywhere, while the sun was shining down brightly and warmly, enlivening the whole scene around and making the ocean, in spite of its still rough condition, almost look pleasant; the white wreaths of spray, broken-off by the wind from the tops of the waves, glistening with the prismatic hues of the rainbow as they were tossed up in the air on clashing billow meeting billow.
On board the ship, also, matters had considerably improved, only two men being required at the helm in place of four, for the vessel was ever so much more easy to steer; and, I could see preparations being made in the waist for bending a new main-topsail and mizzen staysail in place of those that had been blown away when we were in the vortex of the hurricane.
It was a difficult job getting the remains of the old main-topsail off the yard, the wind blowing still with great force and the men having to hold on with all their might. But, after an hour’s labour, the task was accomplished, and then the new piece of canvas was sent up into the top by the halliards, where, after being bent and close-reefed, it was sheeted home and the yard hoisted up again, spreading the sail.
The mizzen staysail followed suit; and then, seeing that the ship bore the pressure pretty well, Captain Miles ordered the fore-topmast staysail to be hoisted. This brought the Josephine more up to the wind, the vessel now sailing with it about a couple of points abaft the beam.
She heeled over tremendously, burying all the lee bulwarks under water, with the sea rushing along her channels like a mill-race; but, she held to it bravely, and we all congratulated ourselves on having weathered the storm and carried out Captain Miles’s boast of making the gale serve his purpose, thus turning a foul wind into a fair one.
Towards mid-day, the captain took an observation, which amply corroborated his lunars of the previous evening, we being found to be in 32 degrees North latitude and 40 degrees West longitude, the slight difference between this and his former reckoning being due to the distance we had run during the night.
The wind still held up, however, and although we were carrying more canvas than we really ought to have had on the ship in such a gale, Captain Miles was just thinking of setting the spanker and bending a new fore-topsail, when, as if it had been all at once shut off from its source, the strong north-western wind in a moment ceased to blow.
At this time there was not a single cloud on the horizon anywhere, the sky being absolutely clear and beautifully blue; but I noticed something like a white wall of water on our port bow advancing towards the Josephine.
The sight resembled an enormous wave raised up to twenty times the height of those in our more immediate vicinity.
“Look, Mr Marline!” I cried. “What is that there to the left?”
He glanced where I pointed, and so did Jackson, the latter singing out the moment he caught sight of the wave to the two men at the wheel, who were Davis and a German sailor, “Down with the helm—sharp!”
“Hullo! what’s the matter?” exclaimed Captain Miles, hearing the order and raising himself up from the cabin skylight where he had been bending over his log-book, in which he had been jotting down an entry. “What’s up now?”
“Something uncommonly like a white squall, sir,” hurriedly explained Jackson. “It’s coming down fast on us from windward, and will be on us in a jiffey. Down with the helm sharp, don’t you hear?” he called out a second time to the helmsmen.
Captain Miles, quite startled now, looked round, and seeing the great wave of water, now quite close, borne before the coming wind, repeated the order to put down the helm more sharply still, adding also to the watch on duty:
“Cast-off the topsail sheets and let everything go by the run!”
Whether Davis heard the order to let the ship’s head fall off and wilfully disobeyed it, on account of its coming from Jackson, whom he hated, or whether he was paralysed with terror at the approach of this new danger, after our having passed through all the perils of the cyclone, no one could say; but he not only did not turn the spokes of the wheel himself, but he absolutely prevented the other man from doing so.
Seeing the vessel did not answer the helm, the captain and Jackson together darted aft, dragging away Davis and fiercely jamming the wheel down as hard as they could.
The movement, however, came too late.
Before the Josephine’s bows could pay off, a terrific blast of wind, worse than anything that had yet assailed her, struck her sideways. Over she was borne to leeward, dipping and dipping until her yard-arms; and then, the tops of her masts, touching the water, becoming gradually immersed as the ship canted.
At the same moment, too, with a loud double report, the foresail and main-topsail blew out of the bolt-ropes, floating away in the distance. But this relief, great as it was, did not right the ship, for the huge white wave, following the gust, forced her over still more on her side; and, in less time than I have taken to tell of the occurrence, the Josephine was on her beam-ends and every soul on board struggling in the water for dear life.
“Hole on, Mass’ Tom, hole on!” I heard Jake’s voice cry somewhere, as I sank beneath the rocking surges that were in an instant cresting over the poop. “Hole on, Mass’ Tom, hole on!”
I tried to battle with the sea, but it bore me down, and down, and down.
And then—I felt I was drowning!