Chapter Five.
Danger on the Deep—A Forest of Waterspouts—The “Arrandoon” is Swamped—The Warning.
“La la lay lee-ah, lay la le lo-O” So went the song on deck—a song without words, short, and interrupted at every bar, as the men hauled cheerily on tack and sheet.
Such a thing would not be allowed for a single moment on board a British man-o’-war, as the watch singing while they obeyed the orders of the bo’sun’s pipe, taking in sail, squaring yards, or doing any other duty required of them. And yet, with all due respect for my own flag, methinks there are times when, as practised in merchant or passenger ships, that strange, weird, wordless song is not at all an unpleasant sound to listen to. By night, for instance, after you have turned in to your little narrow bed—the cradle of the deep, in which you are nightly rocked—to hear it rising and falling, and ending in long-drawn cadence, gives one an indescribable feeling of peace and security. Your bark is all alone—so your thoughts may run—on a wild world of waters. There may not be another ship within hundreds of miles; the wind may be rising or the wind may be falling—what do you care? What need you care? There are watchful eyes on deck, there are good men and true overhead, and they seem to sing your cradle hymn, “La la lee ah,” and before it is done you are wrapt in that sweetest, that dreamless slumber that landsmen seldom know.
There was one man at least in every watch on board the Arrandoon, who usually led the song that accompanied the hauling on a rope, with a sweet, clear tenor voice; you could not have been angry with these men had you been twenty times a man-o’-war’s man.
It was about an hour after breakfast, and our boys were lazing below. For some time previous to the working song, there had been perfect silence on board—a silence broken only now and then by a short word of command, a footstep on deck, or the ominous flapping of the canvas aloft, as it shivered for a moment, then filled and swelled out again.
Had you been down below, one sign alone would have told you that something was going to happen—that some change was about to take place. It was this: when everything is going on all right, you hear the almost constant tramp, tramp of the officer of the watch up and down the quarter-deck, but this was absent now, and you would have known without seeing him that he was standing, probably, by the binnacle, his eyes now bent aloft, and now sweeping the horizon, and now and then glancing at the compass.
Then came a word or two of command, given in a quiet, ordinary tone of voice—there was no occasion to howl on this particular morning. And after this a rush of feet, and next the song, and the bo’sun’s pipe. Thus:—