During the course of the previous night symptoms of bad weather had appeared—a sudden fall of the barometer and a gathering of storm clouds, both signs of the formidable hurricanes that too often lash these seas to fury.
About three o’clock in the afternoon a squall got up so suddenly that it almost caught the ship—a serious matter for a vessel which, heeled over to one side, cannot answer to her rudder and is in danger of not being brought up again unless her rigging is cut away. If that is done, she is disabled, incapable of offering any resistance to the waves while lying to, and is at the mercy of the ocean’s fury.
As soon as this storm broke the passengers had, of course, been obliged to keep their cabins, for the deck was swept by tremendous seas. Only Fritz and Frank stayed on deck to lend a hand with the crew.
Captain Gould took the watch at the outset, and the boatswain was at the wheel, while the second and third officers were on duty in the forecastle. The crew were at their posts, ready to obey the captain’s orders, for it was a matter of life and death. The slightest mistake in the handling of her, while the seas were breaking over the Flag as she lay half over on the port side, might have meant the end. Every effort must be made to get her up again, and then to trim her sails so as to bring her head on to the squall.
And yet the mistake was made, not deliberately perhaps, for the ship ran the risk of foundering through it, but certainly through some misunderstanding of the captain’s orders, of which an officer ought not to have been capable, if he possessed any of the instincts of a sailor.
Robert Borupt, the second officer, alone was to blame. The foretopsail, trimmed at a wrong moment, drove the ship still farther over, and a tremendous lump of water crashed over the taffrail.
“That cursed Borupt wants to sink us!” cried Captain Gould.
“He has done it!” the boatswain answered, trying to shove the tiller to starboard.
The captain leaped to the deck and made his way forward at the risk of being swept back by the water. After a desperate struggle he reached the forecastle.
“Get to your cabin!” he shouted in a voice of wrath to the second officer; “get to your cabin, and stop there!”