One night, while we were playing cards in the dogwatch, something struck the “Zangwahee” like a tremendous hammer-blow. We were carrying a lot of canvas at the time. The “Zangwahee” heeled over and tumbled us in a heap on the port side of the forecastle. The boatswain’s dog, old Moses, a huge, fluffy fellow with fine brown eyes that were full of wisdom, rushed out on deck and barked at the stars. Moses was always alert, being the first to obey the mate’s orders. In a moment we had followed Moses on deck in a regular stampede. The mate was yelling and swearing like a madman.
“Where the blazing h—— are ye, mon? Take in sail; she’ll have the masts ripped out of her!” (The mate seldom gave direct orders to those old sailormen who had run the Easter down and doubled Cape Horn before he was at his mother’s breast!)
That typhoon had struck us without the slightest warning. The “Zangwahee” was already diving, as I clambered aloft with the rest of the crew. The seas, calm as a sheet of glass when the sun went down, were heaving angrily as the wind howled across the night. It was a marvellous and grand sight, for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The stars were flickering as though the typhoon’s wild breath reached to the remote outer spaces of infinity. As I crawled along the foot-ropes aloft, I looked down on the “Zangwahee’s” swaying decks and distinctly saw old Moses barking as he stared aloft, his hairy nose sniffing the stars. I looked seaward and saw the ramping seas rolling away to the dim night skylines like travelling mountains. As we fisted the canvas, the old skipper roared his orders from the poop; his beard blew upward and went over his shoulders as the wind struck him. Of course, up there aloft we got the full force of the blast. I clung on like grim death. We had to keep our faces to leeward, otherwise it were impossible to breathe at all, as the wind struck us like a solid mass. I cursed that typhoon. I hadn’t any diplomas for ability in going aloft on dark nights while typhoons blew. Besides, I had a swollen face through toothache. I felt as though I was being tossed about in space, lost in an infinity of wind and darkness, with only the stars around me.
“‘Old ’ard! yer son of a gun!” roared an old salt, as I clutched the canvas with one hand and grabbed his beard with the other when the “Zangwahee” nearly turned turtle. It was Olwyn Saga, and for a moment I had thought that a kind, vast white beard had been thrust out of space, until I heard the mouth give a muffled oath. Only one who has been aloft on a sailing-ship in really bad weather knows the sensation one feels when one hangs on to the taut ropes of a stick that seems to wobble in space, a stick with a dozen singing sailors clinging to it, using frightful oaths as they apparently grab the stars and curse, when they should be thinking of the supreme possibility of suddenly appearing before their Maker.
“Avast there! Shiver-me-timbers! What yer doing, yer young B——!” seemed to groan a sepulchral bearded voice from out the stars!
“Nothing,” I wailed, as the vessel, pooping a tremendous sea, seemed to dive over the rim of the world into an abyss. I had instinctively clutched the nearest solid portion of the visible universe—the seat of the aged boatswain’s pants! And still those old salts sang some strange chanty as we see-sawed to and fro in space. The moon had just risen, blood-red on the horizon, sending a wild glow over the storm-tossed waters. And, as I looked down from my perch in space, I saw the tremendous seas lifting their oily backs, like mammoth monsters, as they chased and charged the staggering ship. The skipper was still on the poop, using his hands as a siren, as he yelled to the winds apparently. Suddenly a tremendous smudge seemed to obliterate the world, a smudge that incarnadined the ocean. The “Zangwahee” rose like a leaping stag, then fell. Even the seasoned salts clinging beside me ceased their eternal chanty at that awful moment. Crash! the “Zangwahee” had apparently collided with the blood-red moon! I distinctly saw the outstretched praying hands of the emblematical figure-head as the jibboom dived and then stabbed the moon, and I went head-over-heels and fell softly into the moon’s ghostly fires! So did it all seem to me, as the “Zangwahee” nearly foundered, and I, in some inexplicable double-somersault, had a swift glimpse of the horizon, as she fell between the mountainous seas and I was jerked into old Olwyn’s arms. I saw the great living walls of foam-lashed waters flying past us. For one moment the foretop-gallant yard seemed exactly level with the foaming pinnacles of the mountains of water that were travelling S.W. But for Olwyn’s providential grip on me, I should surely have fallen from aloft, that I know. I thanked Heaven when everything was snug aloft and we all carefully descended the rattlings. I recall that I had barely got my bare feet on the bulwark side, prior to jumping down on deck, when another sea struck us. Again it seemed that we had foundered and that the waters were thundering over our heads, ramping along, shrieking with delight as we awaited the trump of doom. When the “Zangwahee” once more righted herself, we picked the skipper up as he lay by the galley amidships. He had been washed off the poop. By some miracle the man at the wheel had been able to stick to his post, and so had managed to keep the “Zangwahee” from falling broadside on into the tremendous seas. The chief mate helped to carry the skipper aft and lay him in his bunk. His leg had been broken. Suddenly old Hans wailed out in a horror-stricken voice, “By the soul of Neptune, if my old Moses ain’t gone overboard!”
The huddled crew stood by the cuddy’s alley-way, white-faced as they stared over the wild waters. The swollen moon’s wild red light, sweeping the mountainous seas, made a glow that somehow harmonized with the intense inner drama, the sorrow of that moment. The faithful eyes of that comrade, who had stood sentinel by their bunks, were out there, staring blindly in the engulfing cataclysms of those terrible night waters.
“Shiver-me-timbers!” breathed forth those ancient men, as it came again—a faint, deep, baying sound out of the night, “Wough! Wough!”
That familiar sound touched the very heart-strings of those ancient sailormen. “God ’elp us all, me shipmate’s overboard!” said Hans to the chief mate. The “Zangwahee” rose on a mountainous sea; then once more we shipped heavy water. The torn sails of the mizzen-yard flapped, booming like big drums, as those old seadogs stood there looking into each other’s eyes. As for old Hans, he had never looked so appealingly or spoken in so abject a way to a modern officer before.
For a moment the clear eyes of “Scotty,” for so they called the mate, stared on Hans. He was hesitating. In that supreme moment he was the true monarch of that buffeting little empire of wooden planks on an infinity of water. His humble subjects awaited the order that would prove if his heart glittered with the true stuff that would stamp him as a man in their eyes.