It took us but a few minutes to batten down the forecastle hatch securely, for there was a good tarpaulin cover that had been specially made to fit it; and when that was done I set our scanty crew to work—myself lending a hand—to secure the galley and the boats with extra lashings, so that they might not be washed away: and when we had finished, the cook entered his galley and shut himself in, to finish the night there.
As it happened, we were none too soon in the completion of our preparations; for scarcely had we finished when the ruddy glow in the sky began to die out again, and as it did so the first of those scuffling puffs of which Chips had spoken came whining and moaning across the surface of the ocean from the south-west, filling our scanty spread of canvas with a resounding clap and then passing away toward the north-east, its track across the glistening surface of the ocean being marked by a dimming blur like a catspaw, which swept down toward us, touched us for an instant, and was gone again. This occurred some seven or eight times at decreasing intervals, each succeeding rush of air being of a few seconds’ longer duration than the preceding one, and coming with greater strength and spite, thus enabling us at last to get steerage way upon the schooner and partially turn her stern toward the point from which we expected the outfly to come. And when presently it came roaring and howling and screaming down upon us, with such a medley of sound as might be expected from a legion of unchained furies, our port quarter was turned towards it, with the schooner in motion and paying off before it. Yet, even so, it swooped down upon us with such appalling violence that the little vessel careened until her lee sheer-poles were buried and the water was up to the coaming of the main hatch. But with way on her, her helm hard up, no after canvas set, and the hurricane dragging at her stout foresail, she could not help paying off, and after a long minute of heart-racking suspense, during which we momentarily expected her to keel-up with us, she suddenly righted and went flying away dead before the wind, with the water boiling under her bows up to the level of her head-boards.
One of the Martha Brown’s good points was that she steered as handily as a little boat. I therefore had no difficulty in keeping her dead before the wind without assistance, although Cunningham stood by to lend me a hand should I chance to need any help. Also the water, apart from the boiling foam into which its surface was scourged by the hurricane, was perfectly smooth, the smallest suggestion of a wave crest being instantly seized by the wind and swept away to leeward in the form of fine, salt rain; indeed, the air was so full of spindrift and scudwater that I believed, even had it been daylight, we could not have seen farther than about two, or at most three, lengths from the ship. As it was, with the outfly of the hurricane that weird, unnatural, ruddy light of which I have spoken almost immediately died out from the sky, leaving the night as pitch-dark as before, save for the ghostly gleam of phosphorescent light which arose from the storm-swept ocean, and which gave the water, as far as it could be seen, the appearance as if moonlight were shining up through it.
When we had been scudding for a full quarter of an hour before that raving, screaming, howling fury of wind I began momentarily to expect and look for some indication that the worst was over, and to hope that the wind would moderate sufficiently to allow us to heave the schooner to before the sea should acquire height and weight enough to render the operation dangerous, for now every mile that we ran was carrying us just so much farther from our destination. But as time went on the gale, instead of moderating, seemed to increase in strength, until I began to wonder how much longer hemp and pine and canvas could endure the terrific strain to which our foremast, its rigging, and the reefed foresail were exposed. Still, although the mast was bowed forward in a curve that seemed to have approached perilously near to breaking-point, and although the shrouds and backstays were strained until they were hard as iron bars, everything was, so far, holding splendidly, and the schooner was rushing along at a speed which I was firmly persuaded she had never before approached.
At length, after I had been at the wheel nearly three hours, Cunningham insisted on relieving me: and, to speak truth, I was more than glad to accept his offer, for notwithstanding that it was by that time blowing harder than ever, and that the wind continued to scoop up the water in such vast quantities that the air was thick with salt rain, a high and unpleasantly steep sea had gradually risen, chasing the schooner and constantly threatening to poop her, or broach her to, so that at length, in order to escape the one fate or the other, it became necessary to keep the wheel perpetually in motion, now to port and anon to starboard; and a couple of hours of that kind of work, combined with the heavy strain upon one’s nerves, is enough pretty well to tire out the strongest—moreover, I was drenched to the skin. Therefore I gladly made way for Cunningham, and, having first gone forward and directed Murdock to go aft and stand by the wheel, so that he might be at hand in the event of Cunningham needing any assistance, I returned aft—finding it necessary, by the way, to go down on my hands and knees and literally crawl along the deck, in order to make headway against the buffeting of the wind—and went below to my cabin, where I proceeded to strip off my wet clothes and subject myself to a vigorous towelling preparatory to donning a dry rig and my mackintosh.
Taking my time over the operation, I had proceeded so far as to have donned a dry undervest and a pair of thin duck trousers; and, having rolled the legs of these up to my knees, was in the act of unhooking my long mackintosh coat from its peg, when a terrific shock hurled me violently against the cabin bulkhead, and the next instant a deafening medley of sounds, compounded chiefly of the crash of breaking spars, the wild yells of Cunningham and Murdock, the seething smash of a perfect mountain of water on the deck, the splintering of the glass in the cabin skylight and the pouring of a deluge of water down into the cabin, smote upon my ears.
Partially stunned by the violence with which I had been dashed against the bulkhead, I made no immediate effort to rise, but remained passively where I had fallen, stupidly striving to realise what had happened, until a tremendous upheaval of the schooner’s hull, by which she was hove completely over on her beam-ends, and a rush of water that half-filled my cabin awoke me to the consciousness that a catastrophe of some sort had overtaken us, and I scrambled awkwardly and with difficulty to my feet, pulling myself up by means of the knobs of the drawers under my standing bedplace, when another furious shock again upset me, and I fell squatting into the water violently surging to and fro athwart my cabin. By this time, however, full consciousness of the serious character of the situation had come to me, and as the schooner was again hove up and almost on to her opposite beam-ends, I let go my hold of the drawer-knobs and went swirling out through my stateroom door, lifted fairly off my feet by the rush of water, and found myself swimming for my life in the main cabin, in the midst of a squadron of cushions that had floated or been flung off the top of the cabin lockers. Then another mountainous sea swooped down upon and overwhelmed the hapless schooner, another deluge poured into her cabin through the smashed skylight and the companion, and had not a backwash of water just then swept me into the companion way and stranded me on the ladder, so that I could grasp the handrail, I should certainly have been drowned, for that second downpour filled the cabin to the level of the beams.
As I pulled myself up and secured a footing on the companion ladder I felt the hull of schooner again soaring aloft, up, up, until it seemed to my excited imagination as though the little craft was being hove right up among the clouds and at the same time being capsized. Then came the thundering crash of another mountain of water upon her deck, accompanied by the sound of rending woodwork as the companion cover parted company and was swept away; a whole Niagara of water poured down through the opening upon my devoted head, and as I clung to the handrail with the grip of a drowning man the schooner struck a third time, with such terrific violence that I fully expected the hull to go to pieces about my ears. But no, the stanchly built little hooker still held together, although I knew that her bottom must be stove in like a cracked egg-shell; and presently, when I felt that I could not hold my breath for another second, I found my head once more above water, and saw dimly, close above me, the hole in the deck where the companion cover had once been. Another moment and I had again found footing on the ladder, and, bruised all over and aching in every joint of my body, I crawled out on deck.
Whether it was that my eyes had at last adjusted themselves to the darkness, or that the darkness was less profound than it had been, I know not, but as I emerged from the companion way and secured a footing on deck I became aware that I could dimly perceive my immediate surroundings. The first object to catch my eye was the stump of the mainmast within a few feet of the spot where I was standing, and the instinct of self-preservation at once prompted me to make a dash at it and fling my arms round it, in order that I might not be swept away by the next sea which should break aboard. And as I stood there gasping for breath and staring about me I discovered that I could not only dimly perceive my immediate surroundings, but that
