Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice

by Frank Thomas Bullen

All hands flew to obey, and steadily the small triangle of sail rose, carefully attended as to the sheet, until without a shake it was set. “Hard up with that helm, stand by your weather braces,” were the next orders, while springing into the weather mizzen-rigging the skipper tore the tarpaulin down which was holding her up to the wind. Slowly she paid off, and gathered way as the yards were checked, and presently, to the almost hysterical delight of all hands, they saw the boat, a tiny spot in that snowy waste, being tossed like a chip in a torrent, but looking staunch and seaworthy still.

Down towards her sped the ship now, although only that rag of sail was set forrard, under full steerage control, with the skipper clinging in the weather rigging like a bat, and conning the vessel with waves of his hand, for his voice was useless in that uproar. Down past the boat they swept, high on the crest of a gigantic wave, while the tiny overloaded craft seemed to cower in the valley between two wave-crests as if she were sheltering there.

Then at the skipper’s beckoning hand some of the fellows rushed aft and hauled out the head of the mizzen. Down with the helm, no time to watch for smooth seas now, let go the fore-topmast staysail halyards, and up she comes into the wind, receiving as she did so the full impact of the terrible sea that seemed as if it must crush her into fragments. She shuddered in every rivet, but survived, the drivers of those rivets in some far-away shipyard all unconscious of this life and death testing of their work.

And there, hove to again under bare poles with just the tarpaulin spread as before, she lay with all hands straining their eyes for the coming of the boat. Mr. Jacks, watching with stern-set face the manœuvres of the ship, followed her passing with orders to stand by the oars so that at his word the boat might be swung off again, and driven before the wind and sea, and got under the lee of the waiting ship.

It was boldly, gallantly, successfully done, but not one of them failed to note how hungrily the mighty seas roared around their insignificance, but while some felt their hearts shrivel within them at the immediate prospect of dissolution, others, among whom was Frank, were elated as the old Vikings at the prospect of battle, and would fain have shouted for joy. But the weary time of watching, and waiting, and noting the onrush of each awful sea had tested them to the last fibre, and they felt infinitely relieved at the change of action for passive endurance.

Away she sped, flung from crest to hollow of the seas, but steered so splendidly by the second mate that, although the foam seemed to stand above her gunwale in wreaths, nothing but the spray came over. And they all watched the face of the steersman, who looked, as indeed he was, a tower of strength, confident and able. Just shaving the stern of the Sealark by, as it seemed, a hand’s breadth, he shouted, “Pull port, all you know,” and the boat shot up alongside, to receive a line and be secured.

Then as she rose and fell, kept away from being stove in by the eddying seas coming under the ship’s bottom, one by one, watching their opportunity, scrambled on board until, all but the second mate and Frank having left her, the bridle was hooked on and many willing hands swung the gallant craft up into her place again. A splendid feat nobly performed, and one that all those engaged in it would ever remember as making an elevating epoch in their lives.

No sooner was the boat secured than the weather broke, and before midnight the Sealark, under topsail, foresail, and lower staysails, was plunging away on her course again as if rejoicing in her victory over the hungry sea. Meanwhile all the heroes of the adventure had slipped back into their grooves again, Frank especially treating the whole affair with a lofty nonchalance as if it were hardly worth recalling, but secretly enjoying an uplifting sense of having done a good deed.

The saved crew were distributed according to the barque’s limited accommodation, and made as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances, none of them, fortunately, being injured or so exhausted that they needed special care. The skipper, entertaining the rescued officers in the cabin, learned that the lost ship was a soft wood ship hailing from Frederikstad, laden with coal from Newport, and bound to Rio Janeiro. That she was leaky when she started from port, and never from the first coming on of this frightful gale had she possessed the faintest chance of living through it.

The Norwegian skipper further told them that towards the last, when the enfeebled rigging had given way and the rusted-through chain-plates had been broken off or torn out of the rotten topsides, letting the masts tumble over the side, the overstrained hull just opened out like a basket, and pumping became useless. The boats went early in the fight; in any case they were of very little use, all of them having the dry-rot. He finished his account by saying, “And but for you coming just when you did, Captain Jenkins, sixteen of us some hours ago would have been deep below the surface of this rough sea, all our troubles over.” Thus the Norwegian skipper, one of nature’s gentlemen, as with eyes humid with gratitude he grasped Captain Jenkins’ hand. Jenkins, confused, changed the subject, and pointed out that he must land them all at Las Palmas as his commissariat, to say nothing of his accommodation, was entirely unequal to the strain upon it. In which the Norwegian entirely agreed.