'Gawd's treuth,' said Charlie Baker, who was a joker, 'I've 'eard tell of the brave west winds, but these 'ere are puffectly reckless 'eroes!'
Old Balaam stumped the weather side of the poop, or hung on to the weather mizzen rigging and bawled—
'Let her scoot; what she can't carry—hic—she may drag. Mister Briggs—hic—shake out a reef in the main taups'l; I smells the cookin' on board the Scanderbeg, what ho!'
'Good Lord,' said Briggs. And Mr. Creak said so too.
'We'll be crawlin' into Hobson's Bay yet under a jury rig,' both mates agreed. They prophesied sadly, gloomily; and they prophesied right.
'The Scanderbeg will lick us by months,' they said. Here they prophesied wrong, for the Scanderbeg was a hundred miles only to the south'ard, and the same gale that was destined to whip the sticks out of the Cormorant was worse the further south it blew. They were then in latitude 45° S. and longitude 56° W., and the Crozets were on their starboard quarter. The real gale started at N.W. like a perfect fiend, grew into a hurricane from the west with the centre of the disturbance to the south-'ard, and when it passed away with frightful squalls into a steady sou'wester, the Cormorant was lying head to wind, anchored to part of her own wreckage, and she hadn't a feather to fly with. Captain Balaam went below and called to the steward.
'Bunting, rum!' said Balaam, and Bunting, who was as white as spindrift with terror, brought it. Balaam went to sleep calmly, and left matters to Briggs and Creak. The worst having come to the worst, being left to themselves, they proved to be men. They had something to do and did it. They cut all the wreck adrift and rigged a proper sea-anchor and repaired damages as best they could. But they couldn't repair the damage done to the provisions. The whole of the front of the poop had been burst in by the sea, and a big hole driven by the mizzen-topmast into the deck right through the poop and main deck into the lazarette. Into that there went so much water that anything not in tins was unfit to eat. And now all the pork and beef, save that in the harness casks, was found to be rotten.
'Great Scott!' said Briggs. The crew of the Cormorant anticipated starvation and had huge appetites. But they bore up well. A day ahead is enough for men of the sea. Charlie Baker took hold of the boys and felt them all over to see if they were fat. The others thought it an admirable joke. The boys were not so sure that it was.
'Never mind, mates,' said Baker, 'a boy will go a long way, and we 'ave three! But I wonder 'ow the Scanderbeg is makin' it?'
There is something peculiarly diabolical at times in the way of the sea. It was a coincidence, though perhaps an ordinary one, that the poor Scanderbeg was just then wallowing at a sea-anchor a hundred miles to the south of them, with nothing but the stumps of her masts to show a rag on. But it was a far more extraordinary coincidence that her crew were in danger of starvation. As Captain Wood did not drink, his steward did. It seems necessary that some one shall at sea, and though it is usually the skipper, who has no one to control him, it excites no surprise to find that the steward does. This particular specimen of a hard-worked individual went into the lazarette with an uncovered candle, sampled some rum, which was forty over proof, and fell asleep to wake in a world where we are led to believe drink is scarce, though smoking is permitted. And the Scanderbeg was on fire just when the wind from the N.W. and a falling barometer announced the approach of a hurricane.