Overland: A Novel

by John William De Forest

"How is the lady passenger?" Thurstane could not help whispering.

"Guess she's asleep, sah," returned the negro. "Fus-rate sailor, sah. But them greasers is having tough times," he grinned. "Can't abide the sea, greasers can't, sah."

Smiling with a grim satisfaction at this last statement, Thurstane gave the man a five-dollar piece, muttered, "Call me if anything goes wrong," and slipped into his narrow dormitory. Without undressing, he lay down and tried to sleep; but, although it was past midnight, he stayed broad awake for an hour or more; he was too full of thoughts and emotions to find easy quiet in a pillow. Near him—yes, in the very next stateroom—lay the being who had made his life first a heaven and then a hell. The present and the past struggled in him, and tossed him with their tormenting contest. After a while, too, as the plunging of the brig increased, and he heard renewed sounds of disaster on deck, he began to fear for Clara's safety. It was a strange feeling, and yet a most natural one. He had not ceased to love; he seemed indeed to love her more than ever; to think of her struggling in the billows was horrible; he knew even then that he would willingly die to save her. But after a time the incessant motion affected him, and he dozed gradually into a sound slumber.

Hours later the jerking and pitching became so furious that it awakened him, and when he rose on his elbow he was thrown out of his berth by a tremendous lurch. Sitting up with his feet braced, he listened for a little to the roar of the tempest, the trampling feet on deck, and the screaming orders. Evidently things were going hardly above; the storm was little less than a tornado. Seriously anxious at last for Clara—or, as he tried to call her to himself, Miss Van Diemen—he stole out of his room, clambered or fell up the companionway, opened the door after a struggle with a sea which had just come inboard, got on to the quarter-deck, and, holding by the shrouds, quailed before a spectacle as sublime and more terrible than the Great Cañon of the Colorado.

It was daylight. The sun was just rising from behind a waste of waters; it revealed nothing but a waste of waters. All around the brig, as far as the eye could reach, the Pacific was one vast tumble of huge blue-gray, mottled masses, breaking incessantly in long, curling ridges, or lofty, tossing steeps of foam. Each wave was composed of scores of ordinary waves, just as the greater mountains are composed of ranges and peaks. They seemed moving volcanoes, changing form with every minute of their agony, and spouting lavas of froth. All over this immense riot of tormented deeps rolled beaten and terrified armies of clouds. The wind reigned supreme, driving with a relentless spite, a steady and obdurate pressure, as if it were a current of water. It pinned the sailors to the yards, and nearly blew Thurstane from the deck.

The Lolotte was down to close-reefed topsails, close-reefed spencer and spanker, and storm-jib. Even upon this small and stout spread of canvas the wind was working destruction, for just as Thurstane reached the deck the jib parted and went to leeward in ribbons. Sailors were seen now on the bowsprit fighting at once with sea and air, now buried in water, and now holding on against the storm, and slowly gathering in the flapping, snapping fragments. Next a new jib (a third one) was bent on, hoisted half-way, and blown out like a piece of wet paper. Almost at the same moment the captain saw threatening mouths grimace in the mainsail, and screamed "Never mind there forrard. Lay up on the maintawps'l yard. Lay up and furl."

After half an hour's fight, the sail bagging and slatting furiously, it was lashed anyway around the yard, and the men crawled slowly down again, jammed and bruised against the shrouds by the wind. Every jib and forestaysail on board having now been torn out, the brig remained under close-reefed foretopsail, spencer, and spanker, and did little but drift to leeward. The gale was at its height, blowing as if it were shot out of the mouths of cannon, and chasing the ocean before it in mountains of foam. One thing after another went; the topgallants shook loose and had to be sent down; the chain bobstays parted and the martingale slued out of place; one of the anchors broke its fastenings and hammered at the side; the galley gave way and went slopping into the lee scuppers. No food that morning except dry crackers and cold beef; all hands laboring exhaustingly to repair damages and make things taut. For more than half an hour three men were out on the guys and backropes endeavoring to reset the martingale, deluged over and over by seas, and at last driven in beaten. Others were relashing the galley, hauling the loose anchor and all the anchors up on the rail, and resetting the loose lee rigging, which threatened at every lurch to let the masts go by the board.

Thurstane presently learned that the wind had changed during the night, at first dropping away for a couple of hours, then reopening with fresh rage from the west, and finally hauling around into the northwest, whence it now came in a steady tempest. The vessel too had altered her course; she was no longer beating in long tacks toward the southeast; she was heading westward and struggling to get away from the land. Thurstane asked few questions; he was a soldier and had learned to meet fate in silence; he knew too that men weighted with responsibilities do not like to be catechised. But he guessed from the frequent anxious looks of the captain eastward that the California coast was perilously near, and that the brig was more likely to be drifting toward it than making headway from it. Surveying through his closed hands the stormy windward horizon, he gave up all thoughts of getting away from Clara by reaching San Diego, and turned toward the idea of saving her from shipwreck.

None of the other passengers came on deck this morning. Garcia, horribly seasick and frightened, held on desperately to his berth, and passed the time in screaming for the "stewrt," cursing his evil surroundings, calling everybody he could think of pigs, dogs, etc., and praying to saints and angels. Coronado, not less sick and blasphemous, had more command over his fears, and kept his prayers for the last pinch. Clara, a much better sailor, and indeed an uncommonly good one, was so far beaten by the motion that she did not get up, but lay as quiet as the brig would let her, patiently awaiting results, now and then smiling at Garcia's shouts, but more frequently thinking of Thurstane, and sometimes praying that she might find him alive at Fort Yuma.

The steward carried cold beef, hard bread, brandy, coffee, and gruel (made in his pantry) from stateroom to stateroom. The girl ate heartily, inquired about the storm, and asked, "When shall we get there?" Garcia and Coronado tried a little of the gruel and a good deal of the brandy and water, and found, as people usually do under such circumstances, that nothing did them any good. The old man wanted to ask the steward a hundred questions, and yelled for his nephew to come and translate for him. Coronado, lying on his back, made no answer to these cries of despair, except in muttered curses and sniffs of angry laughter. So passed the morning in the cabin.