Beggars on Horseback

by F. Tennyson Jesse

Lemaire turned swiftly on the engineer. "We must take charge," he urged in a low voice, his back to the captain, "and then you must do what I say. We will run her close inshore, and . . ."

Whether Elderkin heard above the growing clamour of the ship or not—for the woodwork had begun to crackle like a wheezy concertina and the slap of green water breaking sounded in a scurrying frequency—he knew what the mate was planning. A rim of something cold on the back of Lemaire's neck made his speech fade on his lips, and he and Olsen stood motionless while Elderkin spoke, Olsen's light eyes looking at the fanatical dark ones above the gun.

"I am master of this ship, and what I say goes, or I'll put daylight through your dirty body," said Elderkin, pressing the muzzle in till the dark seamed skin on the mate's neck turned greenish in a circle around the iron. "As for you, Olsen, you're white, though you're a Dutchman, and I look to you to stick. What about the engines?"

"I am sorry about this," replied Olsen, with seeming inconsequence, "but what must be will be. I will do the best with my engines. But if ever we see port again, I have done with you and your ship and your religion. I have my children to think of. I will go below."

And he pulled the chart-room door open. As though his doing so were the signal to some malignancy without, a sudden blow of wind struck the ship; a crash sounded along her decks and on the moment a surge of water flooded into the chart-room. A sudden squall from the south-west, such as sometimes arises like a thunderclap in those latitudes at that time of year, had caught the Spirito Santo in the confusion of the heavy cross seas. That first blow heeled her over, over, over . . . it seemed as though she were dipping swiftly far beyond the angle of safety; further and further. There was nothing to be done for the moment but clutch on to whatever was nearest; cries of terror from the dagos sounded thinly even through the clamour of wind and sea and crashing of gear. Then came that agonizing moment when a vessel, heeled over as far as possible, seems to hesitate, remains poised for the fraction of a second that partakes of the quality of eternity, between recovery and the hair's-breadth more that means foundering.

Then, with a groaning of timbers like some mammoth animal in pain, a thick jarring of machinery, and a clattering of everything movable aboard her, the Spirito Santo came slowly up again. If that gust of wind had held a minute longer she would have rolled herself, her faked cargo, and her huddled lives, down towards the bed of the Pacific; sins and religions, material hopes and spiritual aspirations, alike marked by one fading trail of air bubbles.

Elderkin found he was holding Lemaire round the waist, while Olsen was on his hands and knees in the lather of water streaming off the floor.

"The Lord has decided," said Elderkin, "we have now no choice. Get below, Olsen." He was heaving himself into his oilskins as he spoke, ordered in his movements but speedy, considering the terrible lurching of the vessel. His fight to save the Spirito Santo, to save her against herself, had begun.

He found her topgallant sails thrashing out like blinds from a window, for the topgallant sheets had carried away, while the foresail and fore-topmast-staysail were like to flap themselves to rags. He bellowed his orders above the clamour of the ropes and guys, that were all shrieking and wailing on different notes as though the ship were suddenly endowed with the gift of tongues. The men fought their way up the rigging, and, lying along the slippery yard-arms, wrestled with clew-lines that whipped about as if possessed, while the wet and iron-hard canvas beat back and forth with reports like gunshots. But the men succeeded at length and Elderkin felt that the first tiny stage in his great battle was won.

Already the sea was running in great slopes of blackish green, streaked and scarred with livid whiteness; from the poop the whole of the ship was filled with a swirling mist of spray that wreathed about the masts, only parting here and there to show one boiling flood of broken water that poured across the waist from upreared starboard rail to submerged port scuppers. The forecastle was flooded; from the forecastle head, as the ship pitched, a torrent poured on to the hatches, and when the next moment she dived forward, rushing down a long valley that seemed to slope to the heart of the ocean, two rivers poured out of her hawse-holes. Elderkin, as she dived, called down the tube—the only means of communicating with the engine-room except the still more primitive one of messengers—to stop her. And when it looked as though she could never recover to meet that oncoming mountain, but must dive into it and be smothered, her bows rose once more, up and up, till they raked the swollen clouds, while a wall of whiteness thundered past on either side. As Elderkin called for "full" again, his face was as calm as that of a little child. All that night the storm increased, and wove air and water into one great engine of destruction, and all night Elderkin stayed lashed to the rail of the chart-house, which was momentarily in danger of being washed away like a rabbit-hutch. It was impossible to keep the binnacle alight, and no stars were visible; steering was a mere groping by the feel of the wind. Dawn seemed hardly a lightening, so dark hung the massed clouds, of a curious rusty-brown colour, packed one above the other, overlapping so as to form a solid roof. Only between their lower rim and the slate-grey sea, an occasional glimpse of horizon showed where a thin line of molten pallor ran. Brown, white and steel-grey, with the masts and rigging sharp and black against it all, and the decks, dark and wet, now refracting what light there was as the ship rolled one way, now falling on deadness again as she rolled the other.