The ship was already hove-to; there should therefore be no difficulty in obtaining absolutely accurate soundings. In another couple of minutes a man was stationed in the weather fore chains with the line coiled in his hand and the lead weight, its foot duly “armed” with tallow, sweeping in long swings close over the surface of the water, preparatory to being cast. Presently the weight shot forward and plunged into the sea a fathom or two ahead of the ship, the coils of thin line leapt from the leadsman’s hand, and, as the ship surged slowly ahead, the line slackened, showing that the lead had reached bottom, and the leadsman, bringing the sounding line up and down, proclaimed the depth—eighteen fathoms!
“Eighteen fathoms!” ejaculated I in horrified accents to Polson, who had rejoined me. “That means, Polson, that we are already on top of one of those dangers that I was speaking about last night. Jump for’ard, man, at once; clear away the starboard anchor ready for letting go, and bend the cable to it. And hurry about it, my good fellow, as you value your life. We may need to anchor at any moment in order to save the ship!”
The daylight was by this time coming fast, and it was possible to see with tolerable distinctness all round the ship, to as great a distance as the haziness of the atmosphere would permit. Still at intervals there seemed to float down upon the pinions of the warm, steamy wind that curious suggestion—for it was scarcely more—of the sound of breaking water. But if it were indeed an actual sound, and not an illusion of the senses, what did it mean? Had we already become embayed or entangled among an intricacy of reefs and shoals during the night, or had we in some marvellous fashion blundered past or through them in the darkness, and were already leaving them behind us? As I stood on the poop, asking myself these questions, and sending my glances into the mist that enshrouded the ocean on all sides of me, I fancied that I again caught the mysterious sound which resembled that of breaking water; but this time it seemed to come from ahead. And looking in that direction, I presently became aware of a line of spectral whiteness, stretching right athwart our hawse, that seemed to come and go even as I watched it.
“Stand by to wear ship!” I shouted. As the watch sprang to the braces I signed to the man who was tending the wheel to put it hard up. The ship, with her fore topsail aback, slowly fell off, until she was running dead before the wind; then, just as she was coming to on the other tack, the mist lifted for a moment and I caught a glimpse of a vast expanse of white water foaming and spouting and boiling dead ahead of and, as it seemed to me, close aboard of us!
“Lay aft here, some of you, and haul out the spanker!” I shouted. “Flow your fore topmast staysail sheet, to help her to come to, and call all hands to make sail. Round in upon your after lee braces. Board your fore and main tacks, Polson. We are on a lee shore, here, and must claw off, if we can!”
The furious battering of the boatswain’s handspike upon the fore scuttle brought up the watch below with a rush; and the sight of the white water close to leeward—caught by them the moment that they came on deck—was a hint to them, stronger than any words, of the necessity for haste, causing them to spring about the decks with a display of activity very unusual on the part of the merchant seaman. In a few minutes, the ship having come to on the starboard tack and brought the breakers square off her lee beam, the fore and main tacks were boarded, the sheets hauled aft, and half a dozen of the hands were in the weather rigging on their way aloft to loose the topgallantsails and royals, while two more were laying out upon the jibbooms to loose the jibs. Meanwhile I had sprung into the lee mizen rigging, and from that situation was anxiously scanning the sea ahead and upon the lee bow. To my great relief I presently saw that the ship was looking up high enough to justify the hope that she would claw off from the danger that menaced her to leeward; the sea being merely a short, irregular popple, with no weight in it to set us down toward the white water. Meanwhile the hand in the chains was continuing to take casts of the lead as fast as he could haul in the line, with the result that we seemed to be maintaining our depth of about eighteen fathoms, over a rocky bottom—composed of coral, as I had no doubt, from the peculiar whitish-blue tint of the water.
By the time that the topgallantsails, royals, jibs, and staysails had been set it had become broad daylight, and a few minutes later the sun rose above a heavy bank of thunderous-looking cloud that lay stretched along the eastern horizon, dispersing the mist that had hitherto obscured the atmosphere, and affording us an extended prospect of our surroundings.
The scene thus disclosed was alarming enough; for when, in order to obtain as wide a view as possible, I ascended to the fore topmast crosstrees I discovered, to my consternation, that we were in a sort of lake, of very irregular shape, measuring about eight miles east and west, by perhaps twelve miles north and south, surrounded on all sides by extensive patches of broken water, with narrow, and more or less intricately winding channels of clear water between them. How on earth we had contrived to blunder blindfold into such a trap of a place, in the darkness and thickness of the past night, without touching one or another of the countless reefs by which we were surrounded, passed my comprehension, although I believed I could make out the channel by which we had entered, far away to windward. If I were right in my conjecture we must have hove-to when we were about three or four miles to windward of everything, and then have driven, while still hove-to, along the channel, and finally into the lake-like expanse of comparatively deep water, missing destruction a dozen times or more during the passage by a sheer miracle.
Now, being in the trap, the problem to be solved was, how to get out of it again. Glancing round me, I could see nothing but broken water extending right out to the horizon, look which way I would. With the object of extending my view, I ascended to the royal yard, but even at this elevation the prospect was no more encouraging. Yet, stay, surely that dark streak away there on the northern horizon was blue water! Yes; the longer I looked at it—that thin thread of dark colour, barely visible, and broken here and there by intervening white patches, must be open water. Furthermore, it was to leeward, and therefore to be reached much more quickly and easily than the open water which we had left behind us sometime during the night, and to return to which it would be necessary for us to beat to windward through a more or less intricate and difficult channel. It was undoubtedly true that somewhere out there to windward there existed a channel carrying a sufficient depth of water to float the ship, for she had already passed through it; but our difficulty would be to pick that particular channel out from among the many intersecting streaks of unbroken water that showed so elusively among the breakers. And if it were possible to hit off that channel, or indeed any channel leading without a break into clear water, was the wind sufficiently free to enable us to lay our course along it without breaking tacks? I doubted it very much; and if not, or if at a critical moment the wind should shift a point or two, the ship must inevitably go ashore and become a wreck; for I could nowhere see a channel wide enough to allow the ship to work in. Arguing thus, I soon came to the conclusion that I must look to leeward for the channel that must conduct us to open water and safety.
I accordingly directed my gaze northward; and for some time my eyes searched that vast expanse of seething whiteness for an unbroken channel leading out into blue water from the lagoon-like sheet of water across which the Mercury was then ratching. But all in vain; for while there were plenty of channels leading from the lagoon through the broken water to leeward, not one of them seemed to be continuous all the way across the reef and right out to blue water. They intersected, merged into, and branched off from each other in the most bewildering fashion, and there were at least half a dozen that seemed to lead into open water; but I quite failed to trace a connection between them and those that led out of the lagoon. At length, however, when the ship had reached the easternmost extremity of the lagoon, and the moment had arrived when it became necessary for us to go about and retrace our steps, we suddenly opened out a small patch of unbroken water away to the north-eastward, with a clear, well-defined channel leading from it to the open sea. While I was still regarding this part of the reef I caught a momentary glimpse of another channel leading into the small patch of unbroken water, and intently following its course I presently became convinced that it was continuous, with a channel that opened out close ahead of us, and broad on our lee bow.