He gasped “In manus tuas, Domine,” and fell.
I had hardly recognized him when, with a roar like the combined voices of a troop of lions, the sail tore itself away from us, and with bleeding hands I clutched at the foot-rope stirrup as I fell back. But at the same moment M’Ginty’s arms flew up. He caught at the empty gloom above him, gasping, “In manus tuas, Domine——” and fell. Far beneath us the hungry sea seethed and whirled, its white glare showing ghastly against the thick darkness above. For two or three seconds I hung as if irresolute whether to follow my poor old shipmate or not; then the heavy flapping of the sail aroused me, and springing up again, I renewed my efforts. The ship had evidently got a “wipe up” into the wind, for the sail was now powerless against us, and in less than five minutes it was fast, and we were descending with all speed to renew our desperate fight with the mizen and jigger topsails. The decks were like the sea overside, for wave after wave toppled inboard, and it was at the most imminent risk to life and limb that we scrambled aft, quite a sense of relief coming as we swung out of that turbulent flood into the rigging again.
But I was almost past feeling now. A dull aching sense of loss clung around my heart, and the patient, kindly face of my shipmate seemed branded upon my eyes, as he had lifted it to the stormy skies in his last supplicatory moan. I went about my work doggedly, mechanically; indifferent to cold, fatigue, or pain, until, when at last she was snugged down, and, under the fore lower topsails and reefed foresail, was flying through the darkness like some hunted thing, I staggered wearily into the cheerless fo’c’sle, dropped upon a chest, and stared moodily at vacancy.
Somebody said, “Where’s M’Ginty?” That roused me. It seemed to put new life and hope into me, for I replied quite brightly, “He’s gone to the rest he was talking about in the dog-watch. He’ll never eat workhouse bread, thank God!”
Eager questioning followed, mingled with utter amazement at his getting aloft at all. But when all had said their say one feeling had been plainly manifested—a feeling of deep thankfulness that such a grand old sailor as our shipmate M’Ginty was where he fain would be, taking his long and well-earned rest.
THE LAST STAND OF THE DECAPODS
Probably few of the thinking inhabitants of dry land, with all their craving for tales of the marvellous, the gloomy, and the gigantic, have in these later centuries of the world’s history given much thought to the conditions of constant warfare existing beneath the surface of the ocean. As readers of ancient classics well know, the fathers of literature gave much attention to the vast, awe-inspiring inhabitants of the sea, investing and embellishing the few fragments of fact concerning them which were available with a thousand fantastic inventions of their own naïve imaginations, until there emerged, chief and ruler of them all, the Kraken, Leviathan, or whatever other local name was considered to best convey in one word their accumulated ideas of terror. In lesser degree, but still worthy compeers of the fire-breathing dragon and sky-darkening “Rukh” of earth and sky, a worthy host of attendant sea-monsters were conjured up, until, apart from the terror of loneliness, of irresistible fury and instability that the sea presented to primitive peoples, the awful nature of its supposed inhabitants made the contemplation of an ocean journey sufficient to appal the stoutest heart. A better understanding of this aspect of the sea to early voyagers may be obtained from some of the artistic efforts of those days than anything else. There you shall see gigantic creatures with human faces, teeth like foot-long wedges, armour-plated bodies, and massive feet fitted with claws like scythe-blades, calmly issuing from the waves to prey upon the dwellers on the margin, or devouring with much apparent enjoyment ships with their crews, as a child crunches a stick of barley-sugar. Even such innocent-looking animals as the seals were distorted and decorated until the contemplation of their counterfeit presentment is sufficient to give a healthy man the nightmare, while such monsters as really were so terrible of aspect that they could hardly be “improved” upon were increased in size until they resembled islands whereon whole tribes might live. To these chimæras were credited all natural phenomena such as waterspouts, whirlpools, and the upheaval of submarine volcanoes. Some imaginative people went even farther than that by attributing the support of the whole earth to a vast sea-monster; while others, like the ancient Jews, fondly pictured Leviathan awaiting in the solitude and gloom of ocean’s depths the glad day of Israel’s reunion, when the mountain ranges of his flesh would be ready to furnish forth the family feast for all the myriads of Abraham’s children.
Surely we may pause awhile to contemplate the overmastering courage of the earliest seafarers, who, in spite of all these terrors, unappalled by the comparison between their tiny shallops and the mighty waves that towered above them, set boldly out from shore into the unknown, obeying that deeply rooted instinct of migration which has peopled every habitable part of the earth’s surface. Those who remember their childhood’s dread of the dark, with its possible population of bogeys, who have ever been lost in early youth in some lonely place, can have some dim conception, though only a dim one, after all, of the inward battle these ancients fought and won, until it became possible for the epigram to be written in utmost truth—
“The seas but join the nations they divide.”