McKenzie gave a grim smile. “Heneker won’t be pleased with this day’s work,” he murmured. “And this is only the beginning.” By this time, the mainsail had collapsed and the men were down from the rigging and tugging on the wet canvas. “Ef that there downhaul had parted while you fellers were in the belly o’ that mains’l overside, I cal’late ye’d ha’ bin in Heaven ’r Hell by this time!” observed Surrette. And the others grinned and thought no more about it.
Hove-to under foresail and jumbo and with the wheel lashed, McKenzie and his five men tugged and hauled the heavy wet mainsail aboard. Then commenced the big job of furling it—a herculean task, at which every man had to exert all the strength that was in him to roll the sodden, frozen canvas up and on to the boom. As he pulled and jerked and hefted the weighty roll of canvas on his back in order that the stops could be passed, Donald thought of similar tasks “down under” off the pitch of the Horn in the Kelvinhaugh. No need to go to fifty-five south for strenuous seafaring, he thought. It could be experienced in all its terrors right off the Nova Scotia coast in wintertime, and this was a sample of it.
It took them an hour to get the mainsail stowed, and when it was done, Joak staggered away to his galley—cursing the folly that made a cook a sailor. “A cook aye gets the worst of it,” he growled to himself. “They never want ye on deck but when it’s blawin’ a ruddy gale, and then ye get it butt-end first. I wisht I was back in a guid steamer’s galley whaur ye have nane o’ this murderin’ deck wurrk!” Joak was a true sea-cook, however, and in spite of the awful rolling and tumbling of the vessel, he had his oilskins off, his apron on, and good meal under way—gale or no gale. And the chilled and hungry humans of the Alameda wolfed his hot concoctions and blessed him wholeheartedly.
Throughout the short winter afternoon, they rode the gale under foresail and jumbo, with the wheel lashed and two men on deck to keep a watch. The wind was steadily increasing, and blowing in such terrific squalls from the N.N.E. that the schooner would be pressed lee-rail under during their violence. At tea-time, they stowed the jumbo to make the vessel lie easier, and McKenzie noted by the still falling barometer that the worst was yet to come.
With the darkness came conditions bad enough to frighten capable seamen. A terrible sea—stupendous in the height of the waves and the whitewater which crowned them—raced roaring through the livid night and tossed the schooner about like a cork. The wind, at times, blew in such terrific squalls as to heel the vessel down until half her deck was submerged and the watch had to hang, limpetlike, to the gear to avoid being blown overboard. Nothing born of woman could look to windward in those blasts, and the air was so full of spray as to fill the mouth with salt saliva in the breathing of it. The side-lights could not be kept alight, and a kerosene torch, which they had lit and placed inside a dory to shine against the foresail, was repeatedly doused by the sprays which drenched the schooner. “You’ll just have to keep torches handy inside the cabin gang-way to show a light in case another vessel’s bearing down,” said Donald, after an attempt to keep a riding-light lit on the peak halliards failed. Lightless, they plunged and rolled and prayed that the Alameda would cross no liner’s path that night.
At midnight the glass was down to 28.6 and pumping in rapid jerks, and McKenzie called Surrette’s attention to it. “Did you ever see that before, Archie?” he asked, hanging on to a weather bunk partition to save himself from sliding to leeward. The fisherman stared at the barometer, bit off a chew, and grinned. “Look’s if th’ gaul-derned thing was agoin’ to jibe, Skipper!” he remarked, and Donald laughed at the simile. The quivering of the needle suggested the premonitory symptoms of a sail about to swing over. He sat down on the cabin floor—it was impossible to stand or sit comfortably—and filled a pipe of tobacco. He had just taken a couple of puffs when the cabin slide was shoved back and Wesley shouted, “Gittin’ worse, Skipper, and snow’s thicker’n ever. Thought I h’ard a steamer blowin’—”
McKenzie was on his feet and up the steps in a trice. Clutching the spokes of the lashed wheel he listened with straining ears, and amidst the howl of the wind and the thunder of the sea he heard a regular note which betokened the blast of a steamer’s whistle. “Call the crowd, Wesley, and tell Jim to light the torches in the gangway—” He had barely shouted the words when the faint mast-head light of a large steamer blinked in the blackness to windward. A flicker of red and green showed below and McKenzie knew that the vessel was heading right square for them. Casting off the wheel lashing, he almost screamed, “Stand by yer fore-sheet! We’ll have to swing off!”
With fearful recollections of the Livadia accident in his mind, he watched the nearing lights and spoked the wheel over. Someone was easing off the sheet of the foresail and the vessel was swinging off. Then she gathered way and slipped out from under the roaring bows of the monster driving through the night. It was a big ship—a liner of ten or fifteen thousand tons—and she towered above them as she forged past, bellowing stentorously and rolling ponderously. The black smoke from her belching funnels whirled pungent and bituminous to McKenzie’s nostrils as she vanished into the blackness—a memory of rows of blazing port-holes and swinging fabric.
The Alameda tore through the dark with a huge wave chasing her astern, and waiting but a faltering hand at the wheel to overwhelm and destroy the gallant little craft. McKenzie was a master helmsman, however, and when the steamer passed, he shouted to Surrette beside him, “We’ll come-to again. Go for’ad and tell the boys to sheet in the fores’l when I put the wheel down!” Watching his chance in a smooth between two seas, he gave a shout and eased the spokes over while the crew amidships tugged the boom inboard and belayed. The steamer was but an incident—a common hazard nevertheless on the Banks—and they were hove-to once more.