"It was not till the afternoon, when the midshipman and I had both been busy together seeing various things done about the rigging, as well as having preventer-braces and guys clapped on the booms and gaffs, that we had time to look about us; the schooner still driving along with the breeze strong abeam, and a floating plunge from one wide dark-blue sea to another, as if they handed her onward.
"Jones had got himself made decent below, as I told him, till what with different clothes, and a shave together, besides refreshment from sea weather, he was quite a different man to look at. Even Snelling owned to his sailor-like appearance, though rather surprised at my notion of making him a mate; while as for the men, they didn't know but he had come aboard as such, and to tell the truth, he was having the main-staysail got up and ready to bend at the time, like one accustomed to give orders. By this time I remembered the harbour officer, Webb, whom we'd carried off so unceremoniously, and found he was still in his 'bunk' below, half-sulky and half-sick, consoling himself with brandy and water till we should get into Table Bay again, as he said. 'Only put him into my watch, Mr Collins,' said Snelling gravely, 'and I'll work him up, sir.' The reefer himself, in fact, had all of a sudden turned out in a laughingly dignified style, to meet his new post—in full midshipman's rig, dirk and all, with his cocked hat which I sent him down immediately to change; but he had brushed up his mop of hair, and begun to cultivate the down on his upper lip; while being a deep-shouldered, square-built, short-armed little fellow, as muscular as a monkey, you'd have thought from the back of his coat he was a man cut shorter, and for his face, he had contrived to put such a sour effect into it—meant for great experience, no doubt—that it was only by his eyes one saw he was a boy of sixteen or so; and they were brimful of wild glee, as he jumped about wherever he was needed, doing the work of a couple of ordinary men, and actually delighted when a spray came over the weather bulwarks on top of him, seeing that, instead of the frigate, she was 'our schooner' that did it.
"'I think she walks, Mr Collins!' observed Snelling, holding up his head stiffly, and looking aloft as we went aft, after shaking ourselves from one of these same sprays. 'No denying that, Mr Snelling,' said I as gravely; 'I only wish your fond parents could see you just now, first mate of such a smart craft, Mr Snelling!' His father was a country baronet, who had sent him off to sea with an allowance—I daresay because his looks were no ornament, and there were plenty more coming, though Snelling always pretended his worthy progenitor was an old man. 'Fond, be blowed!' said he, starting; 'I just see him at this moment at the foot of that blessed old mahogany, proposing my health before the ladies go, and——' Here the schooner rose on a sharp, short wave, making a plunge through it that sent the helmsman swinging to the lee-side of the wheel, while a sea washed up over her forecastle, and away aft with the tubs, buckets, and spars, knocking everybody right and left. Snelling and I held on by the weather main-rigging with our feet in a bath, till she lifted bodily through it, careering to her lee-gun'ale.
"'By George, though!' broke out the reefer, smacking his lips as we drew breath, 'I wish he did see me—wouldn't it cheer his declining years, when I got to hand the governor carefully below! And such a rough night as we're going to have of it, too, sir!' 'You unfilial young dog,' said I; 'but so I'm afraid we shall—and no joke either!' Jones was standing near us, watching the looks of the weather, with evident uneasiness, and I asked him what he thought of it. 'In my opinion, sir,' said he, 'you'll have some pretty sudden shift of wind ere long, of a kind I have seen more than once off the Cape before—and that as furious as a south-easter ordinarily is hereabouts. Look away yonder, sir!'
"It had got to a clear, dry north-easterly gale that shook our canvas every time she lifted, singing through the ropes, and bitter cold. Long and heavy as the roll of the sea was, the sky was as keen and clear as glass all round about and aloft, save the mist kicked up by the spray off a wave here and there. If a rag of white cloud appeared, it was blown away, and you saw the black wrinkled side of one wave at a time, a mile wide, you'd have said, freckled all over with spots of foam, and its ridge heaving against the eye of the blast. The waves had begun to break shorter. The schooner, buoyant as she was, and sharp as a dolphin, pitched and rolled at times like mad, and the men forward were standing by to let go the fore-halliards, throat and peak, to ease her a little; when Jones pointed out the bank of gray cloud ahead of us, scarce to be seen through the troughs of the water, except when she lifted well upon a swell of sea. The sun going down in a wild red glare to leeward of us, threw a terrible glitter across the huge slant of one single wave, that rose stretching away far and wide from her very bow, then brought out the sulky wrinkled blue in it; the hissing green crests curled over to the very sunset, as it were, while we sank slowly into the long dark lulling trough, and saw the broken shaft of a rainbow stand glimmering for a moment or two into a black hollow right ahead, when the gale drove it back upon us like an arrow, as the schooner surged through the breast of the next wave. I looked from Snelling to the new mate, who still held on by a belaying-pin and watched the clouds, giving me back a glance that showed he thought the matter more serious than ordinary. 'The sooner we strip her to the storm-staysails,' said I quickly, as we fell into the trough again, 'the better, I think. If it blows harder, we must lie-to with her at once.' My eye was anxiously fixed on Jones, for large as the schooner was, between two and three hundred tons, yet no craft in the world is so nice to bring to the wind in a gale with a heavy sea running. Scudding before it might have done for the frigate, with her full bows, and spars high enough to keep her main-topsail full in spite of the troughs; but even that would have taken us out of our course after the Indiaman. Besides that, to tell the truth, I didn't sufficiently understand fore-and-aft rigged craft in all weathers yet, to be quite sure of what I did at a pinch like the present. 'Yes, yes, sir,' answered he; 'but if you'll take an older man's advice, before that you'll wear her round on the other tack to it. We've the worst to come, or else I'm mistaken, sir.' 'You're accustomed to schooners?' asked I firmly, and gazing him in the face.
I saw his lips open in the sweep of the wind through our after-rigging, and he made a sign with his hand, while a gnawing sort of spasm, as it were, shot through the muscles of his jaw, and for a moment he gave me a fierce, keen glance, almost a glare, from under his strong straight eyebrows—then turned away. 'Take the trumpet then, Mr Jones,' said I, singing out into his ear; 'I'll leave her to you, sir. Mr Snelling, let's see the hatches all fast!' And we scrambled along by the belaying-pins.
"'Are you all ready fore and aft?' came Jones's voice like thunder in the next dip she made, and he leapt up bareheaded on the breech of one of the small carronades aft, holding on with one hand by the weather mainshrouds, and watching the run of the waves as they glimmered off our lee-beam into the dusk, for full five minutes. I had hold of a rope near him, and his eye was as steady as if he were picking out hills in a view. I had full confidence in the man; but I must say it was a nervous moment to me, when I saw him lift the trumpet to his mouth—and furiously as the wind shook the schooner, you heard his hoarse cry, 'Put your helm up—slack off the mainsheet—brail up the mainsail—ease down the weather boom-guy—main-staysail sheet.' And the rest was lost in the wild shriek of the north-east gale. We were hard at it, however, staggering as we hauled and held on, even to the poor half-drowned, terrified Lascars, whom the midshipman had roused out of the caboose and long-boat, shoving the ropes into their leathery hands. But I knew little else till I saw the schooner had payed off before the wind, shearing with a hiss like red-hot iron right through the ridge, betwixt two tremendous combing waves. It swelled green over her larboard bulwark as she heeled over, and she gave a heavy dead lurch with it, as if she would let the next sea break aboard.
"'Now! now!' shouted Jones, at a pitch of voice like no earthly sound; 'aft the mainsheet, for your lives!' He jumped to the wheel himself, at a single bound. We were in two floundering heaps, as we dragged at the main-boom aft, and the headsheets on the forecastle, while she came trembling up in the long bight of the sea, and took the gale steadily before her other beam. It was blowing harder than ever; and the awful 'scud' of the sea rolled her bodily away, as she met it with her weather-bow, washing white over the head-rail, with spray from cathead to bowsprit; the gale heaving her down on the lee-beam till she plunged to the brim on that side, at every forward pitch, so that all hands on deck had to keep crowded together aft. Still it was keen starlight overhead, the gale dry, though it was bitter cold, and the seas long and pretty regular. The schooner behaved wonderfully, being as tight as a bottle; and at the same time we were not only lying our course either for the Mozambique or Indian Ocean, but instead of running farther into the gale, as before, and getting more into the wild Cape latitudes, why at present she tended to clear out of them. I accordingly agreed with Jones to hold on with everything as long as possible, in spite of the way she was sometimes flung off with the crest of a wave, as it were, making a clear dive with her nose under water through a white seething sea that seemed to swell round the whole horizon; the black bank of cloud off our weather-beam towered like icebergs against the cold green sky to south-east, the stars glittering and twinkling over it, with little hazy rings round them, after a fashion that one of us liked no more than the other.
"About midnight, we had got everything off her to the two small storm-staysails, main and fore, the wind blowing great guns, and the half-moon shining right over the long bank, as if the back of it were dead white; while betwixt it and the washing glimmer of moonlight halfway you'd have thought the black heave of the ridges vanished into a bulk of shadow ten times blacker, save for the heads of spray tossing dimly over in it here and there. All at once, in the very height of the gale, as the black floating clouds from the bank began to cross over the gray scud flying fast aloft, a blue flash of lightning shot zigzag into the very comb of a wave ahead of us, then came the clap of thunder, loud enough to be heard above the wind, and in half-a-minute there was a sudden lull. You saw the fleecy rags of scud actually settling together under the dark vapour moving above them, and heard nothing but the vast washing welter of the billows rising and seething for miles round, as if the world were water, while the schooner rolled helplessly away, with her storm-staysails flapping, into the trough. The midshipman almost gasped as he looked to me—not from fear, but as much as to say, 'What next?' Our strange mate stood against the fife-rail of the mainmast, apparently too intent on the sky and sea for speaking. For my own part, I let go my belaying-pin, and half-tumbled to the wheel, almost knocking the sailor down in my haste to put the helm hard up—for I saw how the blast was to come, fairly before the beam, upon us. 'Hard a-starboard with it!' shouted I; 'haul down the main-staysail there—let her fall as she rises.'
"The last words were never heard, for next moment there was another flash of lightning, this time a blaze all round into the troughs of the sea; I saw a body of mist coming down upon us from south-east, through which the gale struck her on the starboard beam, having suddenly shifted eight points or so. The heavy rolling swell from north-east was close aboard, and as soon as I knew what I was about, here she was leaning over to the full tremendous force of the storm, without power to surge ahead, though struggling to rise like a carthorse down on his knees with a load uphill of him. 'Twas by instinct, as they say, I found myself scrambling along to her weather main-channels, where I managed to get out on the side, slippery as it was, and drenched with the blinding showers of spray. I had got my knife at work, cutting the lanyards of the shrouds to let the mainmast go, when I saw Snelling creep after me, like a fearless little fellow as he was, dirk in hand; although what was come of Jones I couldn't see, unless he had lost heart and skulked. All at once, to my great joy, the main-staysail blew inway to leeward out of the bolt-ropes, like a scrap of paper, the main-topmast crashed at the cap and went alongside, when the schooner righted to her keel, with a wild bolt forward through the whole width of an immense wave—one of the 'third waves' it was, commonly the last and the hugest in a single roll of the sea off the Cape, before you sink into a long gliding valley, with a sort of a lull in it. The scene was so terrible at the moment, though we bore up for full half-a-minute to the fair steady stroke of the awful gale, nothing but a yeast of mist, scud, and darkness ahead, the spray torn off the ridge of the wave and flying with us, while the triple run of the heavy seas astern was in danger of sweeping her decks from over the poop—that I felt we must try lying-to with her at once.