Under Sail

by Lincoln Colcord

"What's up, Mr Ridley?" I called "Is it breezing on from the southeast?"

"No, sir" he answered through the door "But there's a strange light on the weather bow, sir, a long way off. I wish you'd come up and have a look at it. I think it must be a ship afire"

I dressed immediately, and went on deck. Off about three points on the weather bow a big glow lit up the heavens, like an island burning somewhere below the horizon. It was impossible to estimate the distance it was away; but only one thing could cause it, there on the broad Atlantic with no land nearer than five hundred miles. That thing was fire. For it distinctly wasn't a natural phenomenon; all those hard violet rays that characterize electrical disturbances were lacking, and in their place were the warm tones of smoke and flame, reflected brightly in the low-hanging sky.

I hauled the ship up as close to the wind as possible, trimmed the yards carefully, and found that I could just fetch the light of the conflagration by jamming her hard. Before this, we had been running free, with the wind a couple of points abaft the beam. Almost as soon as we brought her to the wind, it began to breeze on in little gusts; the delayed southeaster, I realized, was at last rapping at the door. The skysails were already furled, and under ordinary conditions I should now have taken in the royals; but I kept them set and let her go. She was a smart vessel on the wind; the more sail she carried, up to a certain point, the better she liked it and the higher she would point. She heeled a little harder as she felt the squalls, gave a lift and a lunge, then found her pace and settled to it, heading directly for the lurid glow in the western, sky.

Within an hour we were able to make out the tops of flame above the horizon, and saw that there must be a big vessel afire. The flames flickered, appearing and vanishing behind the rim of the ocean, as if the world had caught ablaze and was trying to touch off the sky. A wild sight, almost supernatural; it sent a chill through our hearts, and the whole ship's company were terribly excited. I thought of trying to set the skysails, but my better judgment prevailed. It wouldn't do to carry anything aloft at such a time. In the freshening breeze the Pactolus had all the canvas she wanted, and was making an excellent run of it, as if she realized that time might be a matter of life and death.

The burning ship, when the mate first called me, must have been about thirty-five miles away. At half past six we had her well in view. She looked like an enormous torch dropped on a black and angry ocean; solid flames mounted hundreds of feet in air, illuminating a wide arc of the western horizon. Long before we reached her, the fire lighted our own decks with a wild glare and painted our sails a hideous red.

At seven o'clock, just as dawn was beginning to break, we passed a hundred yards to windward of her, took up a favourable position a short distance beyond, and swung our main yard. She was a large three-masted bark-rigged steamer, a passenger vessel, I saw with increasing alarm. Her main and mizzen masts had already been burned away, the middle section of her hull was red-hot like a stove, and the sheet of solid flame that we'd been watching for hours rose above her with a steady appalling roar, as if a great bellows were blowing under her keel.

It had been apparent to us from the first that nobody could be left aboard—nobody left alive, that is. I felt certain, however, that if they had managed to get away in the boats, they'd be clinging to the vicinity of the disaster, in the knowledge that she would attract everything afloat through a radius of fifty miles or more. Almost immediately, this notion was confirmed; we sighted a bright light on the water just astern of the steamer, then another, and in a few minutes three flare-ups were burning in as many boats and as many directions. Nothing for us to do but keep our mainyard aback and let them row to us. Thus fifteen or twenty minutes passed, while I was on tenterhooks over the ship's situation.

At length, after a desperate struggle, they dragged one by one under our lee. The mate had charge of getting the people aboard. Men in the main channels passed a bow and stern line to each boat, others fended them off with boat-hooks, still others helped the castaways over the rail. It was a lucky chance that we reached them when we did; the three boats were badly overloaded, half full of water, the wind by this time was breezing on sharply, and the sea making up minute by minute. They wouldn't have been able to keep themselves afloat another hour.

The captain's boat was the first to come alongside. I saw them pass up a woman with a year-old baby, then an invalid man. Next came another woman, who proved to be the stewardess of the steamer; she was carrying a heavy parcel done up in a tablecloth, that rattled and jangled like a bag of doubloons. In an overloaded boat, in half a gale of wind, she had salvaged the ship's tableware! The rest of the crowd were indiscriminate; except for the women, of whom there weren't many, I couldn't tell passengers from crew. As I stood watching at the break of the poop, a man with a long beard and a blanket wrapped around him came up to me. He seemed half dazed; he was carrying in his hand a small hatchet, the blade stained with blood.