Looking over the side to windward, as quickly as he dashed the water from his eyes, he noticed that the following wave succeeding the one which had just delivered its attack, was quite two cable lengths off—a more than usually long interval between the waves as yet.
It seemed like an interposition of Providence in our favour, I thought, noticing the lull from my station on the poop almost as soon as Jorrocks perceived it in the bows, and I feared he would have missed the opportunity.
But the boatswain was too good a seaman for that. The very instant the reflection crossed my mind that he would be too late, for the whole thing happened in the “wink of an eye,” he raised his right hand high in the air, standing up to his full height on the bulwarks, while holding on to the ratlines of the foreshrouds—thus allowing his body to act as a sort of additional headsail to aid the fore-topmast staysail, which, as I’ve said before, was the only rag the ship had on her, in forcing her bows round.
Captain Billings was watching Jorrocks even more intently than I; and, without a second’s delay, the moment the latter gave the signal that the critical point for action had arrived, he roared out in a voice of thunder, “Hard up with the helm, hard up, my men, for your lives!”
Mr Macdougall and the two seamen who were standing on either side of the wheel, clutching hold of the spokes and holding on to them with all their might, shifted it round almost as quickly as the skipper’s order was given. But they had to put all their strength into the task to overcome the resistance of the dead weight of the hull, aided as that was by the mountain of water pressing it back upon them and thus resisting their efforts to shift the helm over to port.
For a brief space of time, hardly an instant though it seemed an eternity, the ship appeared somewhat sluggish to respond to the movement of the rudder, hanging in stays and settling down into the great valley of water that loomed on our lee; but the next moment a glad cry of relief burst from all as she answered her helm, a wavering motion of her bows denoting this being then perceptible.
“Now, men, look alive,” cried the skipper. “Cast-off those lee braces here; haul round to windward sharp, and square the yards!”
These orders were executed as rapidly as they were given, the hands being ready at the braces, and only waiting for the word of command to ease the yards round. When these were squared, however, the fore-topmast staysail fluttered and filled with a jerk that made the foremast crack and tremble, the vibration shaking the ship to her centre and penetrating even as far as to the deck beneath our feet as we stood awaiting the issue of the operation—the very planks “creeping” with the concussion caused by this and the bows meeting the send of the sea.
But the power of the little staysail forward, and the effect of the exposed surface of the boatswain’s body in the rigging, both catching the wind at the same time, settled the matter.
Without making any further opposition to our wishes, the Esmeralda payed off handsomely; and, rising up on the crest of an enormous green roller, that had swept up to overwhelm her, but which now passed harmlessly under her keel instead, she surged through the water, gathering way every moment as she showed her heels to the gale, careering over the stormy billows before the blast like a mad thing, as if rejoicing in her freedom after so long being forced to lay to—although the fore-topmast staysail, which had done such good work in getting her head round, parted company as soon as the yards were braced round, blowing away to atoms, and floating off in the distance in the same kite-like fashion in which the jib had previously disappeared.