Overland: A Novel

by John William De Forest

Thurstane remained on deck, eating in soldierly fashion, his pockets full of cold beef and crackers, and his canteen (for every infantry officer learns to carry one) charged with hot coffee. He was pretty wet, inasmuch as the spray showered incessantly athwart ships, while every few minutes heavy seas came over the quarter bulwarks, slamming upon the deck like the tail of a shark in his agonies. During the morning several great combers had surmounted the port bow and rushed aft, carrying along everything loose or that could be loosened, and banging against the companion door with the force of a runaway horse. And these deluges grew more frequent, for the gale was steadily increasing in violence, howling and shrieking out of the gilded eastern horizon as if Lucifer and his angels had been hurled anew from heaven.

About noon the close-reefed foretopsail burst open from earing to earing, and then ripped up to the yard, the corners stretching out before the wind and cracking like musket shots. To set it again was impossible; the orders came, "Down yard—haul out reef tackle;" then half a dozen men laid out on the spar and began furling. Scarcely was this terrible job well under way when a whack of the slatting sail struck a Kanaka boy from his hold, and he was carried to leeward by the gale as if he had been a bag of old clothes, dropping forty feet from the side into the face of a monstrous billow. He swam for a moment, but the next wave combed over him and he disappeared. Then he was seen further astern, still swimming and with his face toward the brig; then another vast breaker rushed upon him with a lion-like roar, and he was gone. Nothing could be done; no boat might live in such a sea; it would have been perilous to change course. The captain glanced at the unfortunate, clenched his fists desperately, and turned to his rigging. Another man took the vacant place on the yard, and the hard, dizzy, frightful labor there went on unflaggingly, with the usual cries of "Haul out, knot away," etc. It was one of the forms of a sailor's funeral.

No time for comments or emotions; the gale filled every mind every minute. It was soon found that the spanker, a pretty large sail, well aft and not balanced by any canvas at the bow, drew too heavily on the stern and made steering almost impossible. A couple of Kanakas were ordered to reef it, but could do nothing with it; the skipper cursed them for "sojers" (our infantryman smiling at the epithet) and sent two first-class hands to replace them; but these also were completely beaten by the hurricane. It was not till a whole watch was put at the job that the big, bellying sheet could be hauled in and made fast in the reef knots. The brig now had not a rag out but her spencer and reduced spanker, both strong, small, and low sails, eased a good deal by their slant, shielded by the elevated port-rail, and thus likely to hold. But it was not sailing; it was simply lying to. The vessel rose and fell on the monstrous waves, but made scarcely more headway than would a tub, and drifted fast toward the still unseen California coast.

All might still have gone well had the northwester continued as it was. But about noon this tempest, which already seemed as furious as it could possibly be, suddenly increased to an absolute hurricane, the wind fairly shoving the brig sidelong over the water. Bang went the spanker, and then bang the spencer, both sails at once flying out to leeward in streamers, and flapping to tatters before the men could spring on the booms to secure them. The destruction was almost as instant and complete as if it had been effected by the broadside of a seventy-four fired at short range.

"Bend on the new spencer," shouted the captain. "Out with it and up with it before she rolls the sticks out of her."

But the rolling commenced instantly, giving the sailors no time for their work. No longer steadied by the wind, the vessel was entirely at the mercy of the sea, and went twice on her beam ends for every billow, first to lee and then to windward. Presently a great, white, hissing comber rose above her larboard bulwark, hung there for a moment as if gloating on its prey, and fell with the force of an avalanche, shaking every spar and timber into an ague, deluging the main deck breast high, and swashing knee-deep over the quarter-deck. The galley, with the cook in it, was torn from its lashings and slung overboard as if it had been a hencoop. The companion doors were stove in as if by a battering ram, and the cabin was flooded in an instant with two feet of water, slopping and lapping among the baggage, and stealing under the doors of the staterooms. The sailors in the waist only saved themselves by rushing into the rigging during the moment in which the breaker hung suspended.

Nothing could be done; the vessel must lift herself from this state of submergence; and so she did, slowly and tremulously, like a sick man rising from his bed. But while the ocean within was still running out of her scuppers, the ocean without assaulted her anew. Successive billows rolled under her, careening her dead weight this way and that, and keeping her constantly wallowing. No rigging could bear such jerking long, and presently the dreaded catastrophe came.

The larboard stays of the foremast snapped first; then the shrouds on the same side doubled in a great bight and parted; next the mast, with a loud, shrieking crash, splintered and went by the board. It fell slowly and with an air of dignified, solemn resignation, like Caesar under the daggers of the conspirators. The cross stays flew apart like cobwebs, but the lee shrouds unfortunately held good; and scarcely was the stick overboard before there was an ominous thumping at the sides, the drum-beat of death. It was like guns turned on their own columns; like Pyrrhus's elephants breaking the phalanx of Pyrrhus.

"Axes!" roared the captain at the first crack. "Axes!" yelled the mate as the spar reeled into the water. "Lay forward and clear the wreck," were the next orders; "cut away with your knives."

Two axes were got up from below; the sailors worked like beavers, waist-deep in water; one, who had lost his knife, tore at the ropes with his teeth. After some minutes of reeling, splashing, chopping, and cutting, the fallen mast, the friend who had become an enemy, the angel who had become a demon, was sent drifting through the creamy foam to leeward. Meantime the mate had sounded the pumps, and brought out of them a clear stream of water, the fresh invasion of ocean.