“Well, Enderby,” I shouted, “what’s the news from the fore end of the ship? Did the sea that pooped us do any damage?”
“Not so much as might ha’ been expected,” returned the boatswain. “The jolly-boat’s clean gone; the life-boat’s a wreck; the to’gallant bulwark, both sides, is gone, for’ard of the fore riggin’; the staysail blowed out of the bolt-ropes directly the gale struck us; and—worst of all—we’ve lost three of our little crowd.”
“Lost!” I ejaculated. “What d’ye mean, man?”
“Just what I says, Mr Blackburn,” answered the boatswain. “We’ve lost three hands—Van Haalst, Mendal, and Manning. The sea that broke aboard us must have took ’em unawares and swept ’em over the bows, for they was on deck before we was swept, and when she cleared herself they was gone!”
“Jove! that’s bad news indeed,” said I. “We were short-handed enough before, but we shall be worse off than ever now. And they were all good men, too; we can ill spare them.”
“Ay,” agreed Enderby; “there’s others that we could better have spared, if some of ’em had to go. But as to them bein’ good men—well, they was good enough sailor-men, I won’t deny, but if we’d lost ’em any other way than bein’ drownded—if they’d cut and run, for instance—I wouldn’t ha’ grieved overmuch at the loss of the two Dagoes.”
Thereupon we fell silent, for to out-shout the yell of the wind and the roar of the sea was no easy matter; moreover the loss of those three men set me thinking, and on top of that the ship needed most careful watching, for, in light trim as she was, there were moments when the rudder seemed to lose control of her, and then it taxed our skill and strength to the utmost to prevent her broaching to, which would have meant the end of her and of all hands.
I shall never forget that night, so long as I live. Never before had I known it blow anything like so hard; the wind smote one like something solid and with such tremendous force that to have stood up, unsupported, against the pressure of it, would have been impossible. If it had been blowing, say, half as hard as it actually was, there would have been a terrific sea running, but, far from this being the case, the surface of the ocean was as flat as a billiard-table, the slightest roughness being instantly seized by the wind and swept away to leeward in the form of scud-water.
Then there was the appalling unnatural darkness, through which the ship was rushing at a speed which I am certain she had never before attained. The only mitigating circumstance was that the wind-lashed sea emitted a certain ghostly radiance that, despite the deluge of spindrift and scud-water with which the air was saturated, enabled one dimly to discern objects as far forward as the foremast. But to rush, at the speed at which we were travelling, into the heart of that pitchy blackness was nerve-racking work, for although the chart assured us that we had a clear sea for some hundreds of miles ahead, there were still such possibilities as derelicts to be reckoned with, and under such circumstances as I have been endeavouring to describe, if an obstacle of any sort should happen to be in our way, to avoid it would be a sheer impossibility, while to strike it would mean for us simply—destruction.
I was anxiously considering the chance of such an eventuality when another terrific gust swooped down upon us; the ship trembled and lurched forward as though she were about to plunge to the bottom and have done with it; I heard a loud “crack” behind me, and simultaneously received a terrible blow on the back of the head; then—oblivion.