Chapter IV.
There are few sights more thrilling than that of a vessel foundering at sea; and for several weeks the Sagamore’s people thought of little but the lost bark and her crew. The Dundee’s steward was set to work in the galley, and the able seamen were divided between the two watches, where each day’s numerous duties soon made them forget their recent hardships. Captain Murray took the loss of his vessel much to heart, and was greatly depressed for some days; but to distract his attention, he voluntarily assumed the bo’s’un’s duties, and became less despondent as time passed.
During the week following the rescue, the Sagamore, with streaming decks, slowly but surely beat her way to the westward against contrary winds. Sometimes it was useless to attempt to proceed against the tremendous head sea, and she was hove to for a time. Then a gale would swoop down, sails would be furled or reefed; and after it was over, a few hours of what Captain Meade facetiously called “pleasant weather” would intervene. Then, if it happened to be day, old Sol shed his kindly warmth upon the ship, and the leaden sky was changed to an alluring blue. If night, the same glorious harvest moon that shone on fields and vineyards far away, here flooded the angry ocean with her soft, mysterious light. At such times, when it was possible to set a few sails, the merry clank, clunk, clank, of the capstan was heard as the heavy yards were hoisted, to the wild accompaniment of a sailors’ chorus. Every day it was “Tack ship” or “All hands reef sail,” until officers and crew were well-nigh fagged out. Most of those on board had been through the same experience many times, and knew that until it ended, all they could do was to bear their trials as best they could.
But one day there were indications of a change for the better. The ship was so far to the west, that a fair wind would enable her to steer north, cross the 50th. parallel, and leave Cape Horn behind. The state of the barometer, combined with other well known signs, led Captain Meade to predict “a regular old ripper from the southeast,” which was just what was wanted.
A violent snow-storm struck the Sagamore that evening, soon covering the decks with a mantle of white. After it ceased the wind nearly failed, and it was decided to put the ship on the other tack, so as to be in readiness to receive the south-easter which was felt to be at hand. When the passengers came on deck after supper, the whole southern horizon was black as pitch, sea and sky blending together in one dark, lowering mass. All hands were called to strip the ship; halyards were let go, sheets slackened, buntlines hauled in, and then the men, in rubber boots and oilers, climbed the rigging and went out upon the swaying yards. The gale struck her before the work was concluded; the icy polar wind was soon screeching through the rigging, to the accompaniment of whirling snow-flakes and flying spray; hail-stones pattered on the deck; and amidst all this, the port watch had to work an hour overtime before it was possible to go below and get supper. It is not an enviable task,—furling stiff, wet sails, one after another, while a bitter wind blows with a force that makes it necessary to hold on with one hand, to avoid being blown into the sea, while you work with the other—and all this at an elevation of sixty or seventy feet above the deck. The wind kept getting into the belly of the half-frozen sails, making them slippery as inflated balloons, and causing the men ten times the usual work to get them laid on the yards; while the pelting snow and hail, combined with the wild plunges of the ship, made it difficult to retain their precarious footing. But the job was finished at last, and grog served out.
Mr. Marsh came below cold and wet, in spite of his oilers, and his eyes heavy from loss of sleep.
“Isn’t this as bad a gale as you were ever in?” asked Hartley. “They were stretching life-lines on the quarter-deck when we came below, which is certainly unusual.”
The mate looked at him a minute, and then burst out irrelevantly, “I’d give a month’s pay to have the son of a sea-cook here who wrote ‘A life on the ocean wave.’ Hang me if I wouldn’t heave him overboard!” And he proceeded to spread a blanket on the floor before the stove, brought a pillow from his room, and threw himself down in his clothes without more words.
The passengers spent the evening at the cabin windows, watching the booming seas roll on board. Both knew they were in for a night of it, and upon retiring, took the precaution to place the “weatherboards” in the front side of their berths, that they might not be pitched out before morning.
Under two topsails and a staysail, the ship tore through the water like a race horse; plunging madly forward, while the big seas astern chased her as a pack of wolves might pursue their prey. The distinctive feature of this gale was that it came from the southeast, instead of from the west, as all the previous ones had done, and was, therefore, a fair wind. The one danger now was, lest it should increase to such a degree that the ship would be unable longer to run before it, thus losing the benefit of a gale which, had it blown with less fury, would have carried her flying across the 50th parallel in twenty-four hours.
Captain Meade was up all night, anxiously noting the behavior of the ship, and calculating over and over the chances of being able to keep on before the gale. Two of the three remaining sails had been furled when the watches were changed at midnight, yet still that six thousand tons of hull and cargo was driven through the water at a rate almost beyond belief. Fast though she went, the seas behind were beginning to travel more swiftly still, and already two had broken over the stern. Anxious as the captain was to go on, he was too good a seaman to disregard these warnings. In another hour the Sagamore might be “pooped” at the rate the sea was running, and so, after consulting with Mr. Marsh, he decided that the ship must be hove to. He did not come to this conclusion without great reluctance and some foreboding, for with the great sea which was now on, the mere act of turning the ship around was attended with great risk. In fact, when the mate was asked for his opinion, he did not hesitate to say that he considered running before the gale preferable to attempting to heave the ship to. Better to stand the chance of being swamped, he contended, than to try an operation which might result in throwing the Sagamore upon her beam ends in the trough of that mountainous sea. This contingency was what Captain Meade also feared, but he decided that of the two dangers, going about was the least.
Accordingly, soon after daybreak, Mr. Marsh bawled, “Wear ship,” following this order with “Port fore brace!”
The mate was clinging to the ladder on the lee side of the forward house when he gave these orders, and before his watch started to execute them, he spoke a few words of warning. “Now, men, you all know there’s an ugly sea running, so look out for yourselves, and don’t shift about without holding fast to the life-lines. Port fore brace! Andrew, you stand by the starboard brace ready to slack away.”
Jack and Montana were at the wheel, and Jumbo was at the lookout. All the others save Andrew, pulled on the brace until the mate shouted “Belay! Now haul in your slack to starboard.” They started to cross the swimming deck, the sea being then on the beam. Some had reached the starboard brace, others were in the middle of the deck; while Gene, who had stopped to make the port brace fast, was not a third of the distance across. At this moment the ship gave a wild roll, and the next, when her starboard bulwarks were far down, an immense “green sea”—a solid wall of water—broke on board.
What followed baffles description. Those who had hold of the starboard brace escaped by clinging tightly to it and ducking beneath the bulwarks, where they were buried under several feet of water, but the others fared worse, being exposed to the full force of the sea. Whether Norris, Smith, and Harry grasped the life-lines or not, they never could clearly tell, but when the ship rolled to port, the great sea swept them before it like flies. All three, by a providential circumstance, were knocked down and jammed in between the iron stanchions and a spare spar lashed to the bulwarks,—all that saved them from going overboard.
But poor Gene! He was caught up like a bit of chaff, and whirled away over the submerged port bulwarks. Everyone near by, including the mate, had all he could do to save his own life, and none of them knew for a few moments what had happened. Captain Meade, from the quarter-deck, saw the awful accident, and his cry of “Man overboard!” and Gene’s despairing shriek mingled together. The captain was a cool man, and he desperately hurled a coil of rope in less time than it takes to tell it, but even had the lost man been able to grasp it, he could no more have held on at the rate the ship was going than he could have seized a flash of lightning. Before the words “Man overboard” were well out of the speaker’s mouth, the poor fellow was disappearing astern; his white face and yellow sou’-wester being plainly visible for several minutes.
It is frightful to see a fellow creature perish before one’s eyes, and at the same time know that one is powerless to render the least assistance—for before the Sagamore could have been brought to a stand, Gene would have been a mile or more astern. But even had he then been in plain sight, no life boat ever constructed could have lived five seconds in that boiling cauldron. The instant it touched the water, it would have capsized or been crushed like an egg shell against the vessel’s side. Death is repulsive at best to the young, even when the path leading to it is smoothed over and made easier by loving friends and relatives, or by the consolations of religious faith. But to be alive and well one second, and then, before sixty seconds have told a minute, to be swept from a vessel’s deck and left to drown—this is horrible beyond conception. What mental tortures must that poor fellow have suffered before losing consciousness, to see the ship, his only hope, vanishing in the distance; and to know that there was not even one chance in a thousand for his rescue. Thus was Gene lost off Cape Horn.
Meanwhile, others might share the same fate unless prompt action was taken, and the wonder was that the mate and his whole watch had not perished with Gene. When the ship freed herself from that sea, Harry and Smith managed to rise unassisted, but Norris lay as one dead, with blood trickling from a wound on the forehead, where he had been thrown against the iron stanchion. Mr. Marsh ran to where he lay, and dragged the unconscious sailor from his perilous position, into the forecastle. Here he had to be left until the job of wearing ship was over, for the Sagamore was in more peril during those few minutes than at any time during the voyage.
She came around without accident, though it was a close shave, and one roll in particular, threw her over until the masts were almost parallel with the ocean. She lay to, well, shipping comparatively little water, and the mate at once investigated the injuries of Norris. He had regained his senses, but felt badly, having received a hard blow on the knee, besides an internal hurt which caused him much pain. The wound on the head proved not to be serious, and after his external injuries had received attention, he was helped to his bunk and relieved from duty until complete rest should have restored him.
The gale blew itself out in twelve hours, and broke shortly after breakfast, a fine day succeeding a night of storm, anxiety, and death. But an atmosphere of gloom pervaded the ship. There was one empty bunk in the forecastle; one man less to stand his trick at the wheel or on the lookout; one hand less to sing out as the watch hauled on the braces; and that one was the merriest and most light-hearted of all. His intelligence and ready ability were in marked contrast to the ignorance and stupidity which characterized most of the crew, and he was a pronounced favorite with all on board;—most of all with Mr. Marsh, who was difficult to please. The mate felt very badly over the matter, and would not discuss it, even with the passengers. Captain Meade deplored the calamity also, and said that during his score of years as master, he had never before lost a man overboard from the deck, though three had been killed at various times by falling from the yards.
The fatality was the subject of much discussion among the crew.
“If he’d of held onto the lines when he was a-crossin’ of the deck, he’d been here now,” said one.
“That’s right,” said another. “I wonder when the captain’ll auction off his clothes?”
“Not for a month, mebbe. He had some good togs, but I’d be afeerd to wear ’em.”
“I never seen such an awful sea; it looked half way up to the fore yard. Seems like Gene was too slick a bird not to hold on to somethin’, though. I’ll warrant he jumped for the main riggin’, and missed it. Only yesterday he was a-tellin’ of me how glad he would be when the ship got into warmer latitudes.”
San Quentin had so far said nothing, but now the old man gave his opinion in a loud and authoritative voice that silenced the discussion. “There ain’t no use of explainin’ how he was carried overboard, nor sayin’ he’d be here now ‘if’ somethin’ hadn’t happened. His time had come, and he had to go, and that’s all there is about it. I’m more’n twice as old as he was, but my time ain’t come, nor it won’t for ten years yet.” With which prophecy the subject was dismissed.
When the mate wrote up the ship’s log that afternoon, he entered: “Sept. 29th—88 days out—Long. 78° 10′ W., Lat. 52° 22′ S.—barometer 28:65; slowly rising—very severe gale from S. E., with heavy sea. Ran before it till daylight, then hove to—Pumps carefully attended.”
He though a moment, and added: “Eugene Escarras, able seaman, aged 25, a native of Algiers, was washed overboard from the main deck, and drowned.”
That was Gene’s epitaph.
The third day after the south-easter, both sea and sky wore a different aspect than either had presented for many weeks past, and the air reminded one of the first balmy spring day after a long winter. Even the moaning, whistling sound in the rigging was gone, and the Cape pigeons and albatross circled through the air with a seemingly new significance, which was doubtless imaginary, as these Antarctic birds revel in storm and cold. A gentle wind had come with the rising sun, and that morning, for the first time in six weeks, the Sagamore presented nearly her whole spread of canvas to the breeze; everything, in fact, but skysails.
The bo’s’un’s leg was mending finely, and surgeon Hartley announced that he would soon be able to leave his bunk. The two mates, ill-tempered from overwork, and worn out from loss of sleep, knew their trials were nearly over, and looked forward to the coming weeks of fair and pleasant weather on the glorious Pacific. The various members of the crew congratulated each other that their days of toil were about over. Soon there would be no further use for mittens, rubber boots and oil-skins, and on Sundays they could lie around the warm dry decks or fish from the bows for hours. San Quentin and Jumbo made a wager as to how soon they could go barefooted, and everyone on board was in fine spirits.
When Captain Meade worked out his sights that noon, he announced to the passengers that the 50th parallel had been crossed during the forenoon watch, on the 79th meridian of west longitude!
After twenty-six days, the ship was around Cape Horn.
The two captains and the passengers stood about the cabin table with the chart spread out before them, and Captain Meade said, as they clinked glasses, “Gentlemen, let us wish the Sagamore a fifty days’ run from here to San Francisco.”