"Captain Williamson caught my motion. 'Port! port, sirrah!' he sang out sternly; 'back with the helm, d' ye hear!' and pulling out a pistol, he levelled it at me with one hand, while he held a second in the other. 'Land!—land!' shouted he, and from the lee of the round-house it came more like a shriek than a shout—'I'll be there though a thousand mutineers——' His eye was like a wild beast's. That moment the truth glanced across me—this was the green leaf, no doubt, the Scotch mate talked so mysteriously of. The man was mad! The land-fever was upon him, as I'd seen it before in men long off the African coast; and he stood eyeing me with one foot hard stamped before him. 'Twas no use trying to be heard, and the desperation of the moment gave me a thought of the sole thing to do. I took off my hat in the light of the binnacle, bowed, and looked him straight in the face with a smile—when his eye wavered, he slowly lowered his pistol, then laughed, waving his hand towards the land to leeward, as if, but for the gale, you'd have heard him cheer. At the instant I sprang behind him with the slack of a rope, and grappled his arms fast, though he'd got the furious power of a madman, and, during half-a-minute, 'twas wrestle for life with me. But the line was round him, arm and leg, and I made it fast, throwing him heavily on the deck, just as one of the mates, with some of the crew, were struggling aft, by help of the belaying-pins, against the hurricane, having caught a glimpse of the thing by the binnacle-light. They looked from me to the captain. The ugly topman made a sign, as much as to say, Knock the fellow down; but the whole lot hung back before the couple of pistol-barrels I handled. The Scotch mate seemed awfully puzzled; and others of the men, who knew from Jacobs what I was, came shoving along, evidently aware what a case we were in.
"A word to Jacobs served to keep him steering her anxiously, so as to head two or three points more south-east in the end, furiously as the wheel jolted. So there we stood, the tornado sweeping sharp as a knife from astern over the poop-deck, with a force that threw anyone back if he left go his hold to get near me, and going up like thunder aloft in the sky. Now and then a weaker flare of lightning glittered across the scud; and, black as it was overhead, the horizon to windward was but one jagged white glare, gushing full of broad shifting streaks through the drift of foam and the spray that strove to rise. Our fore-course still held: and I took the helm from Jacobs, that he might go and manage to get a pull taken on the starboard brace, which would not only slant the sail more to the blasts, but give her the better chance to make the sole point of salvation, by helping her steerage when most needed. Jacobs and Westwood together got this done; and all the time I was keeping my eyes fixed anxiously, as man can fancy, on the last gleams of the fire ashore, as her head made a fairer line with it; but, by little and little, it went quite out, and all was black—though I had taken its bearings by the compass—and I kept her to that for bare life, trembling at every shiver in the foresail's edge, lest either it or the mast should go.
"Suddenly, we began to get into a fearful swell—the Indiaman plunged and shook in every spar left her. I could see nothing ahead, from the wheel, and in the dark; we were getting close in with the land, and the time was coming; but still I held south-east-by-east to the mark of her head in the compass-box, as nearly as might and main could do it, for the heaves that made me think once or twice she was to strike next moment.
"If she went ashore in my hands! why, it was like to drive one mad with fear; and I waited for Jacobs to come back, with a brain ready to turn, almost as if I'd have left the wheel to the other helmsman, and run forward into the bows to look out. The captain lay raving and shouting behind me, though no one else could either have heard or seen him; and where the chief officer was all this time surprised me, unless the madman had made away with him, or locked him in his own cabin, in return for being shut up himself—which, in fact, proved to be the case, cunning as it was to send for him so quietly. At length Jacobs struggled aft to me again, and charging him, for Heaven's sake, to steer exactly the course I gave, I drove before the full strength of the squall along decks to the bowsprit, where I held on and peered out. Dead ahead of us was the high line of coast in the dark—not a mile of swell between the ship and it. By this time the low boom of the surf came under the wind, and you saw the breakers lifting all along—not a single opening in them! I had lost sight of my landmarks, and my heart gulped into my mouth—what I felt 'twould be vain to say—till I thought I did make out one short patch of sheer black in the range of foam, scarce so far on our bow as I'd reckoned the fire to have been; indeed, instead of that, it was rather on her weather than her lee bow; and the more I watched it, and the nearer we drove in that five minutes, the broader it was. 'By all that's good!' thought I, 'if a river there is, that must be the mouth of it!' But, by Heavens! on our present course the ship would run just right upon the point—and, to strike the clear water, her foreyard would require to be braced up, able or not, though the force of the tornado would come fearfully on her quarter, then. There was the chance of taking all the masts out of her; but let them stand ten minutes, and the thing was done, when we opened into the lee of the points—otherwise all was over.
I sprang to the fore-braces and besought the men near me, for God's sake, to drag upon the lee one—and that as if their life hung upon it—when Westwood caught me by the arm. I merely shouted through my hands into his ear to go aft to Jacobs and tell him to keep her head a single point up, whatever might happen, to the last—then I pulled with the men at the brace till it was fast, and scrambled up again to the bowsprit heel. Jove! how she surged to it: the little canvas we had strained like to burst; the masts trembled, and the spars aloft bent like whip-shafts, everything below groaning again; while the swell and the blast together made you dizzy, as you watched the white eddies rising and boiling out of the dark—her cutwater shearing through it and the foam, as if you were going under it. The sound of the hurricane and the surf seemed to be growing together into one awful roar—my very brain began to turn with the pitch I was wrought up to—and it appeared next moment we should heave far up into the savage hubbub of breakers. I was wearying for the crash and the wild confusion that would follow—when all of a sudden, still catching the fierce rush of the gale athwart her quarter into the fore-course, which steadied her though she shuddered to it—all of a sudden, the dark mass of the land seemed as it were parting ahead of her, and a gleam of pale sky opened below the dusk into my very face. I no more knew what I was doing, by this time, nor where we were, than the spar before me—till again, the light broadened, glimmering low betwixt the high land and a lump of rising level on the other bow.
"I hurried aft past the confused knots of men holding on to the lee of the bulwarks, and seized a spoke of the wheel. 'Tom,' shouted I to Westwood, 'run and let free the spanker on the poop! Down with the helm—down with it, Jacobs, my lad!' I sang out; 'never mind spars or canvas!' Down went the helm—the spanker helped to luff her to the strength of the gust—and away she went up to port, the heavy swells rolling her in, while the rush into her staysail and fore-course came in one terrible flash of roaring wind—tearing first one and then the other clear out of the bolt-ropes, though the loose spanker abaft was in less danger, and the way she had from both was enough to take her careening round the point into its lee. By Heavens! there were the streaks of soft haze low over the rising moon, under the broken clouds, beyond a far line of dim fringy woods, she herself just tipping the hollow behind, big and red—when right down from over the cloud above us came a spout of rain, then a sheet of it lifting to the blast as it howled across the point. 'Stand by to let go the larboard anchor!' I sang out through the trumpet; and Jacobs put the helm fully down at the moment, till she was coming head to wind, when I made forward to the mates and men. 'Let—go!' I shouted; not a look turned against me, and away thundered the cable through the hawse-hole; she shook to it, sheered astern, and brought up with her anchor fast. By that time the rain was plashing down in a perfect deluge—you couldn't see a yard from you—all was one white pour of it; although it soon began to drive again over the headland, as the tornado gathered new food out of it. Another anchor was let go, cable paid out, and the ship soon began to swing the other way to the tide, pitching all the while on the short swell.
"The gale still whistled her spars for two or three hours, during which it began by degrees to lull. About eleven o'clock it was clear moonlight to leeward, the air fresh and cool: a delicious watch it was, too. I was walking the poop by myself, two or three men lounging sleepily about the forecastle, and Rickett below on the quarter-deck, when I saw the chief officer himself rush up from below, staring wildly round him, as if he thought we were in some dream or other. I fancied at first the mate would have struck Rickett, from the way he went on, but I kept aft where I was. The eddies ran past the Indiaman's side, and you heard the fast ebb of the tide rushing and rippling sweetly on her taut cables ahead, plashing about the bows and bends. We were in old Bob Martin's river, whatever that might be.
CHAPTER XV
"Well," continued the commander, his voice making use of the breeze as he stood aft of the group, "I could not have slept more than three or four hours on a stretch, when I was woke by a fellow shoving his lantern in my face, and saying it wasn't me he wanted; for which I gave him a hearty objurgation, and turned over a swing of the cot to go asleep again. The sailor grumbled something about the parson being wanted for the captain; and all at once it flashed on my mind where we were, with the whole of last night's ticklish work—seeing that, hard rub as it was, it had clean left me for a time. 'Try the aftermost berth, then,' said I, slipping out in the dark to put on my trousers.