“Hang it, neither can I!” returned the skipper, as if angry with himself because of no timely expedient coming to his mind; but just at that moment the gale suggested something to him—at all events in the way of finding occupation!
All at once, the wind, which had been blowing furiously from the northwards, shifted round without a moment’s warning to the south-west, catching the ship on her quarter, and heeling her over so to leeward that her yard-arms dipped in the heavy rolling sea.
For a second, it seemed as if we were going over; for the Esmeralda remained on her beam ends without righting again, the waves breaking clean over her from windward, and sweeping everything movable from her decks fore and aft; but then, as the force of the blast passed away, she slowly laboured up once more, the masts swaying to and fro as if they were going by the board, for they groaned and creaked like living things in agony.
“Put the helm up—hard up!” shouted the skipper to the man at the wheel; but, as the poor fellow tried to carry out the command, the tiller “took charge,” as sailors say, hurling him right over the wheel against the bulwarks, which broke his leg and almost pitched him over the side. Had this occurred it would have been utterly impossible to have saved him.
Mr Macdougall and I immediately rushed aft; and, the two of us grasping the spokes, managed to turn the wheel round with our united strength; but it was too late to get the ship to pay off, for, a fresh blast of wind striking her full butt, she was taken aback, the foremast coming down with a crash across the deck, carrying with it the bowsprit and maintopmast, the mizzen-topmast following suit a minute afterwards.
This was bad enough in all conscience, without our having the consciousness that besides this loss of all our spars, making the vessel a hopeless log rolling at the mercy of the winds and waves, our cargo of coals was on fire in the hold, forming a raging volcano beneath our feet!
Fortune was cruel. Mishap had followed on mishap. The powers of evil were piling Ossa on Pelion!
The skipper, however, was not daunted yet.
All hands had rushed aft, without being specially called, roused by the crash of the falling spars, so he immediately set them to work with the hatchets fastened round the mainmast bitts, cutting away at the wreckage; and then, as the clouds cleared away and a bit of blue sky showed itself aloft, Captain Billings expressed himself hopeful of getting out of the meshes of that network of danger in every direction with which we seemed surrounded.
“Look alive, men, and don’t despair,” said he to the crew, encouraging them; for they were almost panic-stricken at first, and it was all that Jorrocks and I could do to get them to ply their tomahawks forwards and cut away the rigging, which still held the foremast with all its top-hamper attached to the ship, thumping at her sides as the lumber floated alongside, trying to crunch our timbers in. “Look alive, men, and put your heart into it; all hope hasn’t left us yet! The gale has nearly blown itself out, as you can see for yourselves by that little bit of blue sky there overhead, bigger than a Dutchman’s pair of breeches; so, as soon as the sea goes down a little, we’ll hoist out the boats, so as to have them handy in case we have to abandon the ship, should the fire in the hold get too strong for us, although I don’t fear that yet, my hearties, for the water may drown it out soon, you know. But work away cheerily, my lads, and clear away all that dunnage, so that we can set a little sail presently on the mainmast and mizzen, which we still have standing, when we can make a run for some islands lying close by under the lee of Cape Horn, where I’ll heave her ashore if I can; but, if the vessel don’t reach the land, you needn’t be afraid of not being able to do so in the boats, which we can take to as a last resource, so there’s no fear of your lives being lost, at any rate!”