A Middy in Command: A Tale of the Slave Squadron

by Harry Collingwood

Meanwhile the calm continued, but although the regular swell showed some disposition to subside, a heavy cross-swell was rapidly rising, which caused the schooner to plunge and roll in a jerky, irregular manner, and with such violence that at length it became almost impossible to stand without holding on to something, while to attempt to move about became positively dangerous. To add still further to the unpleasantness of the situation, the little hooker was constantly shipping water so heavily over her rail, bows, and taffrail that we were frequently up to our knees in it, although all the ports had been opened to allow it to run off.

We contrived to complete all our preparations before it became too dark to see; and it was well for us that we did so, for when the darkness came it was a darkness that might be felt, for it was as though we were hemmed in by great black walls which might be touched by merely stretching forth one’s hand, while the heat of the stagnant atmosphere was so oppressive as to cause the perspiration to pour from us in streams. This disagreeable state of affairs continued without break of any kind until about five bells in the first watch, when a cry of astonishment and alarm broke from the watch on the forecastle-head at the sudden appearance on the bowsprit of a ball of light of a sickly greenish hue, which I immediately recognised as a corposant, although I had never seen one before, but had frequently heard them spoken of and described. It was certainly a weird and uncanny sight to behold under such circumstances, and was well-calculated to strike awe into the minds of superstitious seamen, both from the suddenness and the mystery of its appearance, and from its ghostly and unnatural aspect as it poised itself out there on the end of the spar, clinging tenaciously thereto, and alternately flattening and elongating as it swayed in unison with the violent movements of the schooner. And while the men were still gaping at it, open-mouthed, its sickly radiance faintly illuminating their faces and causing them to wear the horrible aspect of decomposing corpses, two others appeared, one on each of the lower mast-heads. For perhaps two minutes, or it might have been a little longer, these last two ghostly lanterns swayed and lengthened and contracted with the wild plungings of the little craft. Then the one on the foremast-head let go its hold and went drifting away astern until it was lost to sight, while the one on the mainmast-head came gliding down the spar until it reached the flooded deck, and vanished as though extinguished by the washing of the water. While this was happening, the corposant on the bowsprit-end also let go its hold and came floating inboard along the spar, causing a regular stampede of the watch, who incontinently came rushing aft as far as the mainmast, to get out of the way of their uncanny visitor, which, however, vanished as it reached the knightheads.

“Ah,” remarked the gunner, who had charge of the watch, “that means that we’re in for a heavy ‘blow’, sir! I’ve seen them things often enough afore, and I’ve always noticed that when any of ’em comes inboard, like them two, extra bad weather is sure to foller. I partic’larly remembers a case in p’int when I was up the Mediterranean in the old Melampus. We was—”

“Listen!” I broke in unceremoniously, as a low, hoarse murmur became audible above the voice of the gunner, the monotonous swish and splash of the water across the deck and in over the bulwarks, and the creaking and groaning of the ship’s timbers. “Surely that is the wind coming at last!”

At the same moment a gust of hot air came screaming and scuffling over us, square off the starboard beam, causing the foresail to fill suddenly with a report like that of a gun, and careening the schooner to her covering board.

“Hard up with your helm, my man; hard up, and let her pay off before it!” I shouted to the man at the helm, while the sound that I had heard increased rapidly in volume, and a long line of white foam, rendered luminous by the phosphorescent state of the water, appeared broad on our starboard beam, sweeping down upon us with appalling velocity. Fortunate was it for us that a preliminary puff had come to help us, for it lasted just long enough to permit the little hooker to gather steerage way and partially to pay off, far enough, that is to say, to bring the onrushing hurricane well over her starboard quarter. Indeed, had the gale happened to strike us square abeam, and with no way on the ship, I am convinced that she must have inevitably turned turtle with us. As it was, when, a few minutes later, the wind swooped down upon us with the fury of a famished wild beast leaping upon its prey, and with a mad babel of terrifying howls and shrieks that utterly baffles description, the little vessel heeled down beneath its first stroke until her lee rail was buried, and the water rose to the level of her hatchway coamings; and but for the fact that she was at that moment not only forging ahead, but also paying off, there would have been an end of all hands, then and there. For what seemed to be, in our anxious condition, a veritable age, but which was probably no more than a brief half-minute, the little vessel lay there, quivering in every timber, and seemed paralysed with terror, as though she were a sentient thing. The wind yelled and raved through her rigging, and the spindrift and scud-water—showing ghostly in the phosphorescent light emitted by the tormented waters—flew over us in blinding, drenching showers. Then, with a sudden jerk the schooner rose almost upright and, with the water foaming about her bows to the level of her head rails, she sped away to leeward at a pace that seemed absolutely impossible to even so swift a craft as she had proved herself to be.

We scudded thus before the gale for nearly an hour, when, availing ourselves of a temporary lull in its fury, we brought the schooner to the wind and hove her to on the starboard tack; but, even then, so tremendous was the force of the wind that, although she showed to it nothing but a close-reefed foresail, the little vessel was buried to the level of her rail.

So violent was the first swoop of the hurricane that the surface of the ocean was as it were crushed flat by it, and the slightest irregularity that presented itself was instantly torn away and swept to leeward in the form of spray. Thus for the first hour or so it was impossible for the sea to rise. At the end of that time, however, the tormented ocean began to assert itself, and, although their crests continued to be torn off by the violence of the wind, the seas steadily rose and gathered weight, until by midnight the little Francesca, was being hove up and flung about as violently as a cork upon the surface of a turbulent stream. And now another of the schooner’s many good qualities revealed itself, for, despite the furious violence of both wind and wave, the little craft rode the raging seas as buoyantly and as daintily as a sea gull, and shipped not so much as a spoonful of water, excepting, of course, such as flew on board in the form of spray. Even of that small quantity we had very little after the schooner had been brought to the wind, for the tremendous pressure of the gale upon her spars and rigging, and upon the small area of her close-reefed foresail laid her over at so steep an angle, and caused her to turn up so bold a weather side, that most of the spray flew clean over her and was swept away to leeward.

The temporary lull in the gale, of which we had taken advantage to heave-to the schooner, lasted only just long enough to enable us to accomplish that manoeuvre. It was well for us that we availed ourselves so promptly of the opportunity, for no other occurred; on the contrary, after that brief lull the gale seemed to increase steadily in fury to such an extent, indeed, that at length I felt that I should not have been in the least surprised had the schooner been blown bodily out of the water and whirled away to leeward like an autumn leaf.