But the climax was yet to come. About 8 P.M. the wind suddenly shifted to an opposite quarter, and blew, if possible, with greater fury. My feelings, however, exhausted by excitement, now sank into that state of apathetic quiescence which disarms death of all its terrors; when, in fact, we can feel no more, but patiently await the worst. Nature thus wisely, at a certain point, always brings insensibility to our relief—the last sigh of departing hope gives birth to resignation. About one o’clock the next day a tremendous sea broke on board, burst open and destroyed the remainder of the poop-cabins and cuddy, and swept chairs, tables, medicine-chests, and every movable they contained, overboard, filling the lower deck with water; but providentially no more lives were lost. The hurricane still raging, clouds and sea commingled; the foremast snapped short off by the deck, and falling athwart the bows, carried with it the jib-boom, leaving the battered hulk, with one mutilated mast, to contend alone with the fury of the elements. A wave, moreover, at this instant, dashed one of our boats to splinters, and nearly made a wreck of another. Thus were the grounds of hope giving way, like a quicksand, under our feet. To add to the intensity of our distress, a pitchy darkness enveloped us when the foremast fell overboard, and the sea breaking, in one continued mighty volume, over the vessel, none could go forward to cut it away; perilous to our safety as was its continuing attached to the bows. Oh! for the genius of a Falconer, that I might adequately depict the horrors of the scene at this moment! Ye “fat and greasy citizens,” ye grumbling John Bulls of every grade, who own the great oracle of retrenchment as your leader, little need ye grudge the soldier or sailor his hard-earned pittance, the price of perils such as these. An inky night, whose gloom was, ever and anon, pierced by a long, blue, zigzag flash of lightning, like one of those wrath-directed bolts of heaven, which Martin, with such fine effect, introduces into his pictures—the roar of elements—the crippled and lumbered vessel, rolling and plunging like a maddened steed, encumbered with the wreck of a shattered vehicle, the few dim lanterns, buttoned up, and hugged to the bosoms of the quarter-masters, the dripping, comfortless, but uncomplaining tars; the captain and his officers, muffled in fear-noughts, and the group, of which I formed one, clinging on here and there, in order to see the worst of what we had to encounter, formed a portion of the picture. Then the stifled sobs, and shrieks and prayers from the women below, filling, like the voices of wailing spirits, the momentary lullings of the gale; the violent beatings of the fallen mast, like a catapult, against the bows, felt through the whole vessel, and filling, even the stout hearts of the captain and his crew with well-founded dismay at each successive thump, formed some of its alarming accompaniments.
“Gillans, we maun get clear of that mast, or ’twill be the ruin of us all,” shouted the captain through his trumpet.
Gillans paused a moment: “It must be done, sir,” said he; “but how to get to her head through this mountain sea I hardly know.”
“I’ll try it,” said the gallant Grinnerson—the wag now transformed into the hero—“happen what may.”
Saying this, he seized an axe, and accompanied by a part of the crew, dashed forward, holding by the shattered bulwarks as they advanced. A few seconds of breathless suspense now elapsed, when a long dazzling flash illumined the vessel; down she lay, deep in the trough of the sea, whilst, by its light, a mountain wave appeared hanging over her, like a spirit of evil, and about to break by its own enormous weight. It broke—down it came, with a stunning smash, on the devoted vessel, taking her on the forecastle and midships, sparkling and fizzing in the lurid glare of the lengthened flash. The ship dived down, as if about to be engulphed. “We’re gone!” burst forth from many a voice. Slowly, however, she rose again from the effects of the stunning blow, and another flash exhibited a group of sailors on the forecastle, actively cutting and hacking away at the ropes and shrouds. In a few seconds the vessel seemed eased; the mast had been cut away, and shortly after, the heroic Grinnerson, streaming with sea-water, was amongst us. He had escaped, though two of the gallant fellows who had accompanied him had been swept away to a watery grave.
“The Lord be thankt! ye ha’e done weel, sir,” said McGuffin, wringing the second mate’s hand in his iron gripe; “ye ha’e saved the ship.”
The ship was now relieved, and the wind evidently falling, hope revived. I descended below, and throwing myself into my cot, slept, spite of the uproar, soundly till morning.
On rising, I found the wind had greatly subsided; but a heavy sea still remained, in which our mutilated vessel rolled and tumbled like a porpoise. All danger, however, was past, and the sea was rapidly going down. Damages were partially repaired. The crew and passengers refreshed themselves, and deep and heartfelt congratulations were exchanged. Captain McGuffin, towards evening, the vessel being steadier, assembled the crew on deck, and offered up thanksgivings to Him who “stilleth the raging of the storm,” for our happy preservation. It was an impressive sight to behold the weather beaten tars, their hats reverentially doffed, ranged along the deck, their lately excited energies sunk into the calm of a thoughtful and devotional demeanour; the pale and jaded passengers, seated abaft, many an eye gratefully upturned; the wild sea and battered hull; and in the centre, bare-headed and erect, the tall and brawny, yet simple-hearted man, our commander, his prayer-book resting on the capstan, his left hand on the leaves, and his right stretched out, as, with a fervour which nothing but his religious feeling could have excited in him, he read firmly, in his broad but nervous Scotch accents, the form of thanksgiving due to Him who had succoured us in our danger, and “with whom are the issues of life and death.”
To prove a particular providence is a hard and baffling task; but we can never err—or if we do it is on the right side—when we pour out our hearts in gratitude to God, for every blessing or deliverance, come to us by what concurrence of causes it may.
By an observation we now found we were off the Tenasserim coast. The ship’s head was consequently put to the northward, and on we sailed towards our destination. At length, on a fine blowing day in the S. W. monsoon, the good ship the Rottenbeam Castle, after a five months’ voyage, entered on the turbid waters of the Sand Heads, renowned for sharks, shipwrecks, and the intricacy of its navigation, dashing on in good style, despite of the battering of the late gale, under all the sail she could carry on the foremast, and two spars rigged out as substitutes for those we had lost. All eyes were, at this time, anxiously on the look-out for the pilot. At length a sail was visible on the horizon, and ere long, a rakish little brig, with the Company’s Yankee-looking pilot-colours flying from the peak, came bowling down, and was pronounced nem. con. to be (strange misnomer) the pilot schooner. Not a moment elapsed ere a boat, manned by lascars, put off from her, and in a few minutes more, the rattle of oars and the boatswain’s whistle announced its arrival alongside. The pilot, accompanied by a bronzed stripling of fifteen, in a seaman’s round jacket and large straw hat, and whose business was to cast the lead, now mounted the side, and as he stepped on deck, touched his hat in a consequential sort of manner, which plainly indicated that pilots were no small men, in these latitudes. Mr. Merryweather, for so I believe he was called, was one of a numerous class, variously subdivided, called the pilot-service, whose extreme utility none can question who studies a chart of the Sand Heads, and the embouchure of the Ganges. The seniors, or branch-pilots, are, some of them, excellent old fellows, have their vessels in high order, give capital feeds out of silver plate, and have generally some valetudinarian from Calcutta on board, invigorating the springs of existence by copious indraughts of the sea-breeze. Mr. Merryweather had quite the cut of an original, and I cannot, therefore, resist the inclination I feel to present the reader with a sketch of him. He was a sturdy, square-built man, of about forty, of whose jolly countenance it might be truly said, and in the language of the Latin grammar, “qui color albus erat, nunc est contrarius albo.” It presented, at one view, one of the most singular compounds of brown, brickdust, and purple I ever beheld; clearly indicating that it had long been the scene of a fierce struggle for the ascendency between the skyey influences of the Sand Heads, on the one hand, from without, and those of aqua vitæ, from within. Sun and wind, on the whole seemed to have had the best of it; but the forces of aqua vitæ had made a most determined stand on that elevated position, the nose, from which there appeared little chance of their being dislodged. Our sturdy Palinurus was attired in a camlet coat, with the uniform lion button, the colour whereof, once blue, now exhibited in its latter days, like a dying dolphin, a variety of interesting shades; a pair of tight nankeens, extending about half-way down the calf, encased his lower extremities, very fully exhibiting their sturdy and unsymmetrical proportions, in which the line of beauty, admitting that to be a curve, had by Dame Nature been most capriciously applied. He would have met with a distinguished reception in Laputa, being built on strictly mathematical principles; for one leg exhibited the segment of a circle, the other something very like an obtuse angle. In a sinewy and weather beaten hand, “spotted like the toad,” he grasped a huge telescope, covered with rusty green baize, the length of which was nearly “the standard of a man;” whilst a large white hat, which bore nearly the same proportion to his size that a mushroom does to its stalk, completed a manly, but not very inviting, portrait.