The Cruise of the "Esmeralda"

by Harry Collingwood

Chapter Nineteen.

In Dire Extremity.

The sudden loss of these two men was not only a terrible shock to us all, it was also a cruel misfortune; for, exclusive of Sir Edgar, it left only four of us to handle the ship. It is true that we were now as snug as it was possible to be, and in a condition to face almost anything that might befall us in the shape of weather; but when it again came to a question of making sail, or, still worse, being obliged to once more shorten sail, perhaps in a hurry, there would be a good deal of heavy labour, all to be done by four, or at most five men. It was, however, one of those deplorable accidents that are incidental to the life of a seaman; and, having in the mean time done all that was possible for the safety of the ship, it was useless to meet our troubles half way, and I therefore arranged that during the continuance of the gale, while there would be really nothing to do but to keep an eye upon the ship, the regular watches should be taken by the four of us in rotation, one at a time, which would thus allow the others plenty of time for rest against the moment when the utmost exertions of all would be once more demanded.

It was now drawing on toward six o’clock, and the aspect of the coming night was very threatening. The sky was completely overspread with a vast unbroken curtain of inky cloud, torn and shredded into a countless host of ragged, fantastic shapes that came rushing up from the northward and westward at headlong speed before the breath of the raving gale, while the air was thick and salt with the ceaseless pelting of the brine torn from the wave-crests, and swept along in a drenching, pitiless rain by the mad fury of the wind. The sea was rising fast, and already presented a formidable and threatening aspect as the towering liquid hills swept successively down upon the ship, froth-laced, and each capped by a hissing, roaring crest of milky foam that reared itself nearly to the height of our foretop over the weather-bow—so steep was it—ere the barque rose to and surmounted it in a smothering deluge of spray. Yet we were doing well; for although, under the tremendous pressure of the wind upon her two close-reefed topsails, the ship was heeled to her covering-board, while in some of her wild lee rolls she careened until her topgallant rail was awash and it became impossible to maintain one’s footing on the deck without holding on to something, she looked well up into the wind, and rode the boiling fury of the sea as buoyantly as a cork. Her foredeck, it is true, from the knight-heads to well abaft the galley, was streaming with the water that incessantly poured over her weather-bow in a torrent of spray; but abaft that the decks would have been dry but for the drenching spindrift.

The darkness fell upon us with a suddenness that was almost startling. I had been for some time—ever since we had hove-to, in fact—narrowly watching the ship to see how she met the seas; but at length, finding that she was taking care of herself, I ordered Joe to lash the wheel, and gave him permission to go below and join the others at supper in the forecastle. Before finally releasing him, however, and assuming my solitary watch, I thought I would have another look at the mercury. I accordingly went below into the saloon, where the lamps were already lighted, glanced at the barometer and saw that the mercury was now stationary, chatted for a minute or two with the occupants of the apartment, and then went on deck again. When I left the deck a few minutes before, the horizon and the forms of the flying clouds were clearly distinguishable; but now, when I returned to it again, the blackness of impenetrable darkness was all round about me, relieved only by the ghostly light of the pale seafire in the foaming wave-crests, and in the tiny stars of phosphorescent light that went careering to leeward across the deck with every lee roll of the ship. It was a weird and awe-inspiring sensation to stand there in the blackness upon the wildly heaving deck, and watch the irresistible, menacing onrush upon the ship of those furious mountain surges, capped with ghostly green fire, with the deafening shriek and din of the gale in the unseen rigging overhead resounding in one’s ears—a sensation well calculated to bring home to a man his own nothingness in presence of the power and majesty of Him Who causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; Who maketh lightnings for the rain; Who bringeth forth the wind out of His treasuries; Who hath His way in the whirlwind and the storm; Who holdeth the sea in the hollow of His hand. And this feeling was in nowise lessened—nay, it was rather intensified—by the thrill of exultation I experienced at the reflection that man, puny as is his strength compared with the mighty forces of Nature, has been endowed by his Creator with an intellect capable of devising and framing a structure so subtly moulded and so strongly put together, that it is able to face and triumphantly survive such a mad fury of wind and sea as then raged around me.

Throughout the greater part of that night the gale continued to blow with unabated fury; but about three o’clock on the following morning a rapid rise of the barometer commenced, and some two hours later a single star twinkling brightly for a moment through a small rift in the hitherto unbroken cloud-rack overhead gave welcome assurance that the worst of the weather was now over—an assurance which was shortly afterward strengthened by a slight but unmistakable decrease in the violence of the wind. Then a few more stars beamed mildly down upon us for brief but lengthening intervals; and finally, about half an hour before the time of sunrise, the great pall of cloud broke up into squadrons of tattered streamers speeding swiftly athwart the sky, which, away down in the eastern quarter, was rapidly paling before the dawn. Anon the pallor became tinged with a chilly hue of yellow, against which the mountainous sea reared itself in vast sharply defined ridges of blackest indigo, paling, as the eye travelled round the horizon toward the western quarter, into a deep blue-grey, capped with lofty, curling crests of pallid foam. Quickly the cold yellow along the eastern horizon became flushed with streaks of angry red; the flying squadrons of rent grey cloud became fringed along their lower edges with dyes of purple and crimson; and presently the upper rim of the sun’s disc, copper-hued and fiery, gleamed through the flying rack low down upon the horizon, flashing a cheerless ray of angry orange across the mountain waste of waters, changing it into a heaving, turbulent surface of sickly olive-green.

It was as dreary, cheerless a sunrise, I think, as I had ever seen. The air, still full of spindrift, was, despite our position only a few degrees north of the Line, chill enough to set one shuddering; the maindeck was all awash with the water that flew incessantly over the weather-bow and poured aft with the heaving of the ship, breaking into miniature cascades among the booms lashed in the waist, and over the lengths of cable stretched along the decks from the windlass to the chain-locker, swirling round the pumps and the foot of the mainmast, and gurgling and sobbing in the lee scuppers; the weather bulwarks were streaming with water; even the topsails were dark with wet: miniature showers were blowing away to leeward off the top of the galley and forward deck-house; and the few dry spots that were to be found here and there about the decks in sheltered places were white with encrusted salt. It was still blowing heavily; the ship was plunging furiously, and rolling so wildly that it was impossible to maintain one’s footing without clinging to something; the continuous raving of the wind among the maze of spars and rigging, especially when the ship rolled to windward, was most depressing to listen to; and the appalling proportions of the vast liquid mountain ranges that, with dreary, persistent, remorseless monotony, came sweeping down upon us from the northward and westward, piling their hissing crests high around us, completed a picture which, for dreary sublimity, I had never seen equalled.

I was tired, and wet, and cold; for, notwithstanding our arrangement of the watches, I had been on deck, off and on, the whole night. I was not sorry, therefore, when Forbes came on deck to relieve me at eight o’clock, thus affording me an opportunity to shift into dry clothes before sitting down to breakfast. We were rather a small company that morning, Sir Edgar and Miss Merrivale being the only members of the saloon party who felt equal to the putting in of an appearance; and after breakfast I was obliged—rather unwillingly, I confess—to go on deck again to secure an observation of the sun, which observation, when worked out, showed that we were nearly thirty miles to the eastward of our proper position. This ascertained, I retired to my cabin, and, flinging myself upon the bunk, “all standing,” instantly sank into a dreamless, refreshing sleep.

It appeared to me that I had not been in my berth more than five minutes when, about a quarter of an hour before noon, Forbes called me in order that we might together take the meridian altitude of the sun; and I was no sooner on my feet than it became apparent that the ship’s motion was by no means so violent as it had been when I lay down; which was sufficiently accounted for by the information imparted to me by the mate that the gale had broken, and that in another hour or two the weather would probably have moderated sufficiently to permit of our filling away upon our course. This news was fully confirmed by the general aspect of affairs when I reached the deck; for the sun was now shining brilliantly in a cloudless sky, and the air was genially warm; while the wind, though still blowing heavily enough to justify us in retaining the close reefs in the topsails, had abated its violence so far that it now blew steadily, instead of beating upon the ship in gusts of headlong fury. The sea, moreover, though it still seemed to run as high as ever, was no longer so steep as it had been; the great mountains of water moving more slowly, and carrying a good wholesome slope on their lee sides, that enabled the ship to ride them easily and comfortably without the provocation of a constantly recurring feeling that each great menacing wall of water was about to overwhelm her.