Still, the precaution was of no avail; for hardly had the men on deck handed the clewlines, when the sail, bulging out under our feet like a huge bag, or rather series of bags, as the wind puckered its folds, burst away from its bolt-ropes with a noise like the report of a gun discharged close to our ears, just as if we had cut it from off the yard, thus saving us any further trouble in furling it.
Casting my eyes round ere beginning the perilous task of climbing down the shrouds again, for it was as much as one could do to hold on, the sharp gusts when they caught one’s legs twirling them about like feathers in the air, the outlook was not merely grand but positively awful. The sea was now rolling, without the slightest exaggeration but literally speaking, mountains high as far as the eye could reach, and the scud flying across my face in the mizzen cross-trees; while the waves on either side of the ship, as we descended into the hollow between them every now and then, were on a level with the yard-arms below and even sometimes rose above these.
“Come, my men,” I heard Mr Mackay calling out, as I at last put my foot down to feel for the nearest ratline before commencing to descend the rigging, “look sharp with that fore-tops’le or we’ll have it go like the mizzen!”
His words were prophetic.
“R–r–r–r–r–r–ip!” sounded the renting, tearing noise of the sail, almost as soon as he spoke; and then, with a greater “bang!” than that of the mizzen-topsail, the main topsail split first from clew to earing and the next second blew away bodily to leeward, floating like a cloud as it was carried along the crests of the rollers out of our ken in a minute. The fore-topsail imitated its example the next moment, leaving the ship now with only the reefed foresail on her in the shape of canvas, a wonderful metamorphosis to the appearance she presented the previous evening at sunset!
We had been trying to beat to windward, so as not to fall off our course; but now that we had hardly a rag to stand by, the captain put up the helm and let her run for it, the foresail with the gale that was blowing sending her at such a rate through the water as to prevent any of the following seas from pooping her. The fear alone of this had prevented him doing so before, “Old Jock” being as fond of scudding as he was of carrying on when he had a fair wind.
Adams and the hands forward, though, were busy getting ready the storm staysails I had seen the former cutting out some days previously so as to be prepared to hoist them on the first available opportunity, as it would never do to run too far off our course, which many hours going at that rate before the nor’-easter would soon have effected; and so, during a slight lull that occurred about breakfast-time, a mizzen staysail and foretopmast staysail, each about the size of a respectable pocket-handkerchief, were got aloft judiciously and the foresail as carefully handed, when the ship was brought round again head to wind and lay-to on the port tack.
A little later there was one terrific burst, the tops of the waves being cut off as with a knife and borne aboard us in sheets of water, while the Silver Queen heeled over to starboard so greatly that it seemed as if she would “turn the turtle” and go down sideways with all hands; but it was the last blast of the storm, for each succeeding hour lessened its force, although the sea continued high. After that it grew gradually calmer and calmer, until we were able to make sail again and bear away eastwards, rounding the Cape two days afterwards, our fifty-sixth from England, in 37 degrees south latitude—the meridian of the “Flying Dutchman’s fortress,” as Table Mountain has been termed by those who once believed in the Vanderdecken legend, being a little over 18 degrees east longitude.
“Begorra, that’s a good job done wid anyhow,” said Tim Rooney on “Old Jock” telling us that all danger of weathering the Cape was past and that we were well within the limits of the Southern Ocean, whose long roll, however, and the cold breath of the Antarctic ice-fields had already betrayed this fact to the old hands on board. “I once knocked about in a vessel as were a-tryin’ to git round this blissid place for a month av Sundays, an’ couldn’t.”
“And what did you do, measter?” asked Joe Fergusson, who had a great respect for the boatswain and was eyeing him open-mouthed. “What did you do when you couldn’t sail round it?”