“Let him stay, captain,” said Mr Kingsland, who had overheard the dialogue, and who, moreover, was acquainted with that functionary. “He’ll know how to take care of himself.”
“Oh, all right; he’ll have to, then. Here, mister, stand there forrard the companion, and lay hold of that ringbolt. Hang on to it, mind—hang on to it by your teeth and your eyelashes for all you know, or you’ll find yourself overboard in less than a duck’s whisper. We are going to get it lively in a minute.”
So saying, he jumped on to the bridge to take the wheel from his subordinate, while Gerard, resolving to follow that advice which related to “hanging on,” looked around upon the situation.
Up went the boat’s head suddenly with a smooth slide, up a great hill of water, from whose summit it seemed she must leap right on to that of the lofty wooded bluff rising on her port bow. Then a mighty plunge; the foam flew in a deafening hiss from her bows, breaking on and pouring knee-deep along her decks. There was a sharp warning cry. In her wake, rearing up higher and higher as it sped on, came a huge green wall—rearing up till it seemed to shut out the very heavens. Watching it with an awestruck fascination, Gerard marked its crest curl, then, with a terrible and appalling crash, it burst full upon their decks.
For a moment he could not have told whether he was overboard, or not. The shock, the continuous pouring rush of the mighty wave—by no means over in a moment—was so stunning, so bewildering in its effect, that his senses were utterly confused. But for his firm hold of the iron ring, he would have been swept away like a feather. Hold on to it, however, he did, and with good reason. The first shock was but an earnest of what was to follow. Crash after crash, the game little craft burying herself completely beneath the mighty seas, to rise again like a duck, only to be sent staggering under once more, as a fresh roller broke in bellowing fury upon her. The rattle of her steering chains, the harsh and laboured clank of her engines, the sharp whirr of her propeller spinning clear of the water, the stifled shrieks of terrified female passengers hermetically sealed up in the cabin below—these alone were the sounds heard through the deafening roar of the surf, the swirling din of cataracts pouring along her heaving decks. A quarter of an hour of this raging, seething cauldron of waters, of buffeting, staggering, plunging, rolling half under, and there was a sudden calm. The terrible bar was passed; and none the worse for her rough usage, the staunch little craft sped blithely over the still waters of the land-locked harbour.
Then, released from their imprisonment, the passengers came swarming on deck, and a woeful sight they presented. Pallid, shaky, grime-besmeared and otherwise the worse for wear, not a man but looked as though he had been turned prematurely out of a hospital, while many of the females were in a fainting and hysterical condition. And small wonder. Here were these unfortunate people sealed up in a square box, whose sole furniture consisted of a wooden bench let into each side, and thus, with nothing in the world to hold on to, literally shaken up as though in a cask rolling downhill, every frantic plunge of the vessel sending them tumbling over and over each other on the floor; many, too, in the wildest throes of sea-sickness; add to this the darkness, the horrible stifling atmosphere, the hoarse thunder of the great seas shivering the fabric, and the shrieks of the panic-stricken women, and it will be seen that the ’tweendecks of a tug-boat crossing the Durban bar might almost put Pandemonium itself to the blush.
“Well, Ridgeley, how did you come through it?” said Maitland, emerging very white and shaky. “I believe I’d sooner end my days in this country than go through that awful cabin experience again.”
“You’d have been better above,” said Gerard. “Although I haven’t got a dry stitch on me, and am going to land in our new country wet to the very bones!”
But the semi-tropical sun was strong and bright, and the sea-water warm. No harm would come of ten such wettings. Then the tug was moored to the quay. There was a rush of coolie porters on board, and our two friends, surrounded by all their worldly goods, planted a first footstep on the land which was to be the scene of their start in life.