The frowning outlines of a big mountain towered up above the vessel’s masts on our left or port bow, hazy and dark and grim, and on the starboard hand a jutting point of land, evidently a spur of the same cliff, projected past the Denver City a long way astern, for we could distinguish the white wash of the sea on the sand at its base; while, right in front, nearly touching our bowsprit, was a mass of trees, whose dusky skeleton branches were waved to and fro by the tropical night breeze, making them appear as if alive, their mournful whishing as they swayed bearing out this impression.
It seemed, at first glance, that the ship had been driven ashore into a small land-locked bay, no outlet being to be seen save the narrow opening between the cliffs astern through which she had been carried by the wave that stranded us—fortunately, without dashing us on the rocks on either hand.
As we gazed around in startled wonder, striving to take in all the details of the strange scene, the misty, brooding vapour lifted still further, and a patch of sky cleared overhead. Through this opening the pale moon shone down, illuminating the landscape with her sickly green light; but she also threw such deep shadows that everything looked weird and unreal, the perspective being dwarfed here and magnified there to so great an extent that the ship’s masts appeared to touch the stars, while the men on the fo’c’s’le were transformed into giants, their forms being for the moment out of all proportion to their natural size, as they craned their necks over the head rail.
Jan Steenbock’s voice from the poop at this juncture recalled my wandering and wondering imagination to the more prosaic and practical realities of our situation, which quickly put to flight the ghostly fancies that had previously crowded thick and fast on my mind.
“Vo’c’s’le ahoy!” shouted the second-mate, his deep, manly tones at once putting fresh courage into all of us, and making the men pull themselves together and start up eager for action, abandoning all their craven fears. “How vas it mit yous vorvarts! Ze sheep, I zink, vas in ze deep vater astern.”
“I’ll soon tell you, sir,” cried Tom Bullover in answer, jumping to the side in a jiffey, with a coil of the lead line, which he took from the main chains, where it was fastened. “I’ll heave the lead, and you shall have our soundings in a brace of shakes, sir!”
With that he clambered into the rigging, preparatory to carrying out his intention; but he had no sooner got into the shrouds than he discovered his task was useless.
“There’s no need to sound, sir,” he sang out; “the ship’s high and dry ashore up to the foremast, and there ain’t more than a foot or two of water aft of that, as far as I can see.”
“Thunder!” roared out the skipper, who had in the meantime come up again on the poop from the cuddy, where he and the first-mate had no doubt been drowning their fright during the darkness with their favourite panacea, rum, leaving the entire control of the ship after she struck to Jan Steenbock. “Air thet so?”
“I says what I sees,” replied Tom Bullover brusquely, he, like most of the hands, being pretty sick by now of the captain’s drunken ways, and pusillanimous behaviour in leaving the deck when the vessel and all on board were in such deadly peril; “and if you don’t believe me, why, you can look over the side and judge where the ship is for yerself!”