Black Pawl

by Ben Ames Williams

CHAPTER X

BLACK PAWL was right. There was wind coming, and plenty of it—too much of it. It began cheerfully enough—just a brisk breeze across a sunlit sea. But the clouds that poked up above the horizon were not cheerful; and when they obscured the sun, and the rain began to drive across the Deborah’s decks, Black Pawl had the canvas coming in. It was time. The first squall caught them under jib and topsails; and the foretopsail went with a crack and a splinter and a whipping tear of canvas. The topmast was broken off short, and dangled and slatted back and forth; and the fore rigging, thus slacked, worked itself into a swift and dangerous confusion.

Black Pawl had been careless; and he knew it, and knew the affair was fault of his and not of the mates. He was just enough to blame himself and no one else. He went forward himself, a tower of strength, and helped clear away the tangle and cut loose the wreckage and make all secure; by that time the full strength of wind and rain was lashing them, and they hove to, to ride it out. Every hatch was closed and fast; the scuttles over the fo’c’stle and steerage and cabin companions were shut and secured, and were opened only when some one came up on deck or went below. The deck-litter was stowed; life-lines were strung fore and aft; and the boats were lashed more securely on their bearers.

A whaling vessel, and even a whaling schooner, is built not for speed but for strength. The Deborah was cut square across the stern; and her bows were blunt, meeting at a right angle under the bowsprit. The waves struck her with shattering, jarring blows. She was heavy with her store of oil in the casks below; and she rose sluggishly to the seas. But she was stout as she was heavy; the thundering waves could not start her timbers. Given proper handling, she would ride any sea and weather any storm.

It was nightfall before all was fast and secure. Black Pawl had held the deck all day; he held it the night through, while the pressure of the gale waxed steadily, until a man could not stand without support in the face of the wind. It was like a giant’s hand that pushed against their chests; they crouched to it, clutching hand-holds, taking the lee of every shelter that offered.

Some water came over the Deborah’s sluggish bows during the first day and night. Toward dawn a mightier wave climbed bodily inboard, over the knight’s-heads. The heavy windlass and bitts, made for sternest toil, broke the first force of the wave, and saved the fo’c’stle scuttle; but the cable-boxes just aft of the foremast were ripped bodily from the deck and slung back the length of the vessel like cannon-balls in the deluge of water. There was one man on deck forward. He held to the windlass till the water had passed him by. Black Pawl and his son were on the quarter, with a third man helping them at the wheel. They were all half drowned; and the wave and the cable-boxes carried away the stern boat and the spare equipment on the skids there. In the darkness Black Pawl shouted, and his son and the seaman answered. So they stuck to their task, and in an hour the black of night faded to the lifeless gray of day; and the sheeting rain lashed and bit at them.

That day through, and hour by hour, the storm grew worse. Ruth and the missionary kept the cabin, by Black Pawl’s orders. The Captain never left the deck; and Dan Darrin and the mate took turns and watches with him there. At noon of that day the galley was smashed by a wave that came over the side; and thereafter plates and knives and pans sifted overside with each fresh rush of water. Black Pawl laughed in the teeth of the storm, and howled to Dan Darrin:

“She’s stripped clean as a hound, now, ready to fight.”

“Aye,” Dan told him. “And she’s a fighter.”

That second night was the worst. The tempest reached its highest pitch at dusk; but there was no slackening of its strength as the night wore through. Black Pawl could only tell his mates, from hour to hour, that it was no worse. “The break will come,” he shouted into the storm; and the wind whipped his words away as though it mocked and played with him.