Afloat and Ashore: A Sea Tale

by James Fenimore Cooper

Marble was exceedingly uneasy during that second night. He remained on deck with me the whole of the morning watch; not that he distrusted my discretion in the least, but because he distrusted the wind and the land. I never saw him in so much concern before, for it was his habit to consider himself a timber of the ship, that was to sink or swim with the craft.

“Miles,” said he, “you and I know something of these 'bloody currents,' and we know they take a ship one way, while she looks as fiercely the other as a pig that is dragged aft by the tail. If we had run down the 50th degree of longitude, now, we might have had plenty of sea-room, and been laying past the Cape, with this very wind; but, no, the old fellow would have had no islands in that case, and he never could be happy without half-a-dozen islands to bother him.”

“Had we run down the 50th degree of longitude,” I answered, “we should have had twenty degrees to make to get round the Horn; whereas, could we only lay through the Straits of Le Maire, six or eight of those very same degrees would carry us clear of everything.”

“Only lay through the Straits of Le Maire, on the 10th November, or what is the same thing in this quarter of the world, of May, and with less than nine hours of day-light! And such day-light, too! Why, our Newfoundland fogs, such stuff as I used to eat when a youngster and a fisherman, are high noon to it! Soundings are out of the question hereabouts; and, before one has hauled in the deep-sea, with all its line out, his cut-water may be on a rock. This ship is so weatherly and drags ahead so fast, that we shall see terra firma before any one has a notion of it. The old man fancies, because the coast of Fuego trends to the north-west, that the land will fall away from us, as fast as we draw towards it. I hope he may live long enough to persuade all hands that he is right!”

Marble and I were conversing on the forecastle at the time, our eyes turned to the westward, for it was scarcely possible for him to look in any other direction, when he interrupted himself, by shouting out—“hard up with the helm—spring to the after-braces, my lads—man mizen-staysail downhaul!” This set everybody in motion, and the captain and third-mate were on deck in a minute. The ship fell off, as soon as we got the mizen-staysail in, and the main-topsail touching. Gathering way fast, as she got the wind more aft, her helm threw her stern up, and away she went like a top. The fore-topmast staysail-sheet was tended with care, and yet the cloth emitted a sound like the report of a swivel, when the sail first filled on the other tack. We got the starboard fore-tack forward, and the larboard sheet aft, by two tremendously severe drags, the blocks and bolts seeming fairly to quiver, as they felt the strains. Everything succeeded, however, and the Crisis began to drag off from the coast of Terra del Fuego, of a certainty; but to go whither, no one could precisely tell. She headed up nearly east, the wind playing about between south-and-by-east, and south-east-and-by-south. On that course, I own I had now great doubt whether she could lay past the Falkland Islands, though I felt persuaded we must be a long distance from them. There was plenty of time before us to take the chances of a change.

As soon as the ship was round, and trimmed by the wind on the other tack, Captain Williams had a grave conversation with the chief-mate, on the subject of his reason for what he had done. Marble maintained he had caught a glimpse of the land ahead—“Just as you know I did of la Dame de Nantes, Captain Williams,” he continued, “and seeing there was no time to be lost, I ordered the helm hard up, to ware off shore.” I distrusted this account, even while it was in the very process of coming out of the chief mate's mouth, and Marble afterwards admitted to me, quite justly; but the captain either was satisfied, or thought it prudent to seem so. By the best calculations I afterwards made, I suppose we must have been from fifteen to twenty leagues from the land when we wore ship; but, as Marble said, when he made his private confessions, “Madagascar was quite enough for me, Miles, without breaking our nose on this sea-gull coast; and there may be 'bloody currents' on this side of the Cape of Good Hope, as well as on the other. We've got just so much of a gale and a foul wind to weather, and the ship will do both quite as well with her head to the eastward, as with her head to the westward.”

All that day the Crisis stood on the starboard tack, dragging through the raging waters as it might be by violence; and just as night shut in again, she wore round, once more, with her head to the westward. So far from abating, the wind increased, and towards evening we found it necessary to furl our topsail and fore-course. Mere rag of a sail as the former had been reduced to, with its four reefs in, it was a delicate job to roll it up. Neb and I stood together in the bunt, and never did I exert myself more than on that occasion. The foresail, too, was a serious matter, but we got both sails in without losing either. Just as the sun set, or as night came to increase the darkness of that gloomy day, the fore-topmast-staysail went out of the bolt-rope, with a report that was heard all over the ship; disappearing in the mist, like a cloud driving in the heavens. A few minutes later, the mizen-staysail was hauled down in order to prevent it from travelling the same road. The jerks even this low canvass occasionally gave the ship, made her tremble from her keel to her trucks.

For the first time, I now witnessed a tempest at sea. Gales, and pretty hard ones, I had often seen; but the force of the wind on this occasion, as much exceeded that in ordinary gales of wind, as the force of these had exceeded that of a whole-sail breeze. The seas seemed crushed, the pressure of the swooping atmosphere, as the currents of the air went howling over the surface of the ocean, fairly preventing them from rising; or, where a mound of water did appear, it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as the axe dubs inequalities from the log. In less than an hour after it began to blow the hardest, there was no very apparent swell—the deep breathing of the ocean is never entirely stilled—and the ship was as steady as if hove half out, her lower yard-arms nearly touching the water, an inclination at which they remained as steadily as if kept there by purchases. A few of us were compelled to go as high as the futtock-shrouds to secure the sails, but higher it was impossible to get. I observed that when I thrust out a hand to clutch anything, it was necessary to make the movement in such a direction as to allow for lee-way, precisely as a boat quarters the stream in crossing against a current. In ascending it was difficult to keep the feet on the ratlins, and in descending, it required a strong effort to force the body down towards the centre of gravity. I make no doubt, had I groped my way up to the cross-trees, and leaped overboard my body would have struck the water, thirty or forty yards from the ship. A marlin-spike falling from either top, would have endangered no one on deck.

When the day returned, a species of lurid, sombre light was diffused over the watery waste, though nothing was visible but the ocean and the ship. Even the sea-birds seemed to have taken refuge in the caverns of the adjacent coast, none re-appearing with the dawn. The air was full of spray, and it was with difficulty that the eye could penetrate as far into the humid atmosphere as half a mile. All hands mustered on deck, as a matter of course, no one wishing to sleep at a time like that. As for us officers, we collected on the forecastle, the spot where danger would first make itself apparent, did it come from the side of the land. It is not easy to make a landsman understand the embarrassments of our situation. We had had no observations for several days, and had been moving about by dead reckoning, in a part of the ocean where the tides run like a mill-tail, with the wind blowing a little hurricane. Even now, when her bows were half submerged, and without a stitch of canvass exposed, the Crisis drove ahead at the rate of three or four knots, luffing as close to the wind as if she carried after-sail. It was Marble's opinion that, in such smooth water, do all we could, the vessel would drive towards the much-dreaded land again, between sun and sun of that short day, a distance of from thirty to forty miles. “Nor is this all, Miles,” he added to me, in an aside, “I no more like this 'bloody current,' than that we had over on the other side of the pond, when we broke our back on the rocks of Madagascar. You never see as smooth water as this, unless when the wind and current are travelling in the same direction.” I made no reply, but there all four of us, the captain and his three mates, stood looking anxiously into the vacant mist on our lee-bow, as if we expected every moment to behold our homes. A silence of ten minutes succeeded, and I was still gazing in the same direction, when by a sort of mystic rising of the curtain, I fancied I saw a beach of long extent, with a dark-looking waste of low bottom extending inland, for a considerable distance. The beach did not appear to be distant half a knot, while the ship seemed to glide along it, as compared with visible objects on shore, at a rate of six or eight miles the hour. It extended, almost in a parallel line with our course, too, as far as could be seen, both astern and ahead.

“What a strange delusion is this!” I thought to myself, and turned to look at my companions, when I found all looking, one at the other, as if to ask a common explanation.