On February 20th, they made to the eastward of Brown’s Bank, and the fair wind which had hurried them along, flickered away and left them rolling, with slatting sails and banging booms, in a heavy swell from the S.E. The sky was solid with stratas of leaden cloud, which ran in layers from nadir to zenith, and the air was chill and cold. McKenzie studied the barometer anxiously—tapping the glass every reading to flog the forecasts of the instrument, which was steadily going down. Archie Surrette—an old fisherman—read the signs. “We’re agoin’ to git some dirt, Skipper,” he remarked. “Awful pink sunrise this mornin’ and there ain’t no gulls araound. This swell comin’ up from th’ south-east ... a south-easter, sure.”
McKenzie laughed. “That’s a fair wind for home, Archie,” he said. “Better get her snugged down though. Call the boys and we’ll get the jib in the tricing jacket and the mains’l reefed before it hits us.”
At noon, the glass had dropped to 29-5 and still going down. A misty rain began to fall, and within half an hour of its coming, the wind came in a squall from the southeast which drove the Alameda down to her rail with the violence of its initial onslaught. When it eased off and the schooner was tearing along towards the Nova Scotia coast, McKenzie ran below to squint at the barometer. “Dropped another tenth,” he muttered anxiously. He laid a chart out on the locker and with the dividers commenced measuring the distance from the vessel’s present position to the nearest harbor. For a minute he sat thinking, and then he rolled up the sea map and threw it into his bunk. “Can’t make it,” he muttered. “This blow will be on us full force within an hour, and we’d be safer offshore than running in on the land in a gale of wind and snow.”
Buttoning up his oilskins, he pulled on his mittens and went on deck. Though it was shortly after noon, the sky was dark and the rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind was blowing in gusts which careened the vessel to her rails as they struck the canvas.
Taking the wheel, he spoke to the helmsman. “Go for’ard Jim, an’ call the boys. Tell the cook to oil up and come on deck. We’ll get the mains’l off her.” And the man scrambled forward to do his bidding with feelings of relief. When the big mainsail is down, fishermen feel that they are in trim for anything.
Taking in the mainsail with a full gang of fishermen, and taking it in, in squally winter weather, with only six men to subdue the thrashing canvas, are two different propositions. When the men mustered aft, McKenzie gave his orders. “Joak will lower away on the peak, and Jim will lower away the throat when I sing out. You, Archie, will ship the crotch and hook in the tackles when Wesley lowers away on the topping lift. Ainslie will stand by the gaff down-haul, and I’ll look after the wheel. We’ll get the mainsheet in first. Are you ready?”
It was blowing harder every minute, and the schooner, by the wind, was plunging and rearing in an ugly cross sea kicked up by the shifting of the squalls to the eastward. The rain was turning into sleet, which cut the skin and numbed the hands with its bitterness and velocity, and which adhered to the gear and froze in the lowering temperature. Donald watched his chance, and in the wake of a violent blast, he rolled the wheel down easily and roared, “Helm’s a lee! Mainsheet!” For five minutes, the Alameda’s quarter was a scene of frenzied action. As the vessel came up, the mainsheet was yanked in by all hands, and then the men ran to the stations. As the schooner rounded into the wind, sails slatting and sheet blocks banging and jangling, McKenzie slipped the wheel in the becket, and held the crotch plank while Surrette hooked the crotch tackle into the ring bolts and hove it taut. The big sixty-foot boom was now amidships, and when it steadied above the crotch, McKenzie roared, “Lower away y’r lift!” And when Wesley Sanders slacked off on the tackle fall, the boom dropped on to the crotch notch; port and starboard crotch tackles already hooked in were hauled taut and belayed, and the order came, “Settle away yer halliards!”
The schooner, plunging and rearing, bows-on to the seas, was threatening to fall off with the wind in foresail and jumbo. “Let yer halliards go by the run!” shouted the skipper, springing to assist the two men tugging at the gaff-downhaul. “And bear a hand here you other fellows!” Joak and Jim at the pin-rail let the halliards go and scrambled aft to lend their strength and beef at the downhaul—wrenching and jerking with the vicious slats of the bellying mainsail, which, half way down the mast, was prevented from coming down further by the wind which filled the canvas.
As all hands struggled with the hauling down rope, a big sea rose above the quarter, roaring with a white-capped crest and curling ready to break. McKenzie saw it. “Belay yer downhaul,” he yelled, “and hang on!” The words were hardly out of his mouth before it broke aboard. The schooner rolled down to its impact, and the men hanging on to the downhaul were enveloped in solid green and washed over the main-boom and into the belly of the mainsail, which, with the force and weight of the water in it, was driven over the low rail and into the sea. Struggling for foot-hold on the slippery canvas and totally submerged in water as the schooner rolled to leeward, McKenzie and the four men with him would have been drowned had not Surrette, who had hung on to the crotch-tackles when the sea struck, jumped up on the cabin house and thrown a rope down to the yelling, oilskinned humans struggling and clawing to get out of the deadly water-filled sail.
As soon as he recovered his breath, McKenzie, with no time to thank Providence for his escape, or to contemplate the horrors of those suffocating minutes over-side, sprung to the wheel and swung the vessel off before the wind. “Get the fore-boom tackle hooked in,” he gasped. “I’ll jibe her and get that mains’l inboard!” As he rolled the wheel over, the Alameda slowly payed off. “Watch yerselves when she comes-to!” he cried in warning, and he stared anxiously at the little knot of men standing amidships by the fore-sheet. The wind was blowing with gale force by now and the sea was running in roaring combers, and the air was white with spray and sleet. For a minute the schooner raced over the waves with the wind aft, and on the declivity of a huge crest, Donald rolled the helm up and the foresail came sweeping over like the flick of a whip—fetching up on the jibing-tackle with such force as to snap the strong iron shackle of the block and to bend the stout boom like a bow. The fore-sheet held, however, and as the schooner came to the wind on the other tack, the men leaped into the main-rigging just as another sea boarded her amidships, and wrenching the staysail-box from off the booby-hatch, carried it over the rail.