Two men came aft to relieve the wheel, which I had rolled up with Mr. Gull’s help, and I had a few minutes’ breathing space as we tore along, the men forward trimming in the braces and squaring the yards for a run before it.
Hicks stood upon the poop near the mizzen, where he had climbed up, and he gazed after Curtis, who, with Yankee Dan, half-dragged and half-carried Miss Allen below. There was a strange look in his eyes, and I saw him cursing in a sinister manner, though what he said was lost in the uproar. Then he joined the captain at the break of the poop, where the old man had remained, having escaped the flood by springing with the rest upon the spanker-boom.
Sir John Hicks was a thorough rascal, according to report, but somehow he showed up very well with Mr. Curtis, who had been a well-known churchman and piously inclined even to the time he had bought his interest in The Gentle Hand.
As for the grim old villain in command, he made no comment, but stood watching his ship without a trace of anxiety upon his mask-like countenance. Even as I watched him, he was calculating the time to swing her up on the port tack to keep afloat in that cross-sea, before which no vessel could run very long.
I could hardly help thinking then that so much nervous strength and control must have a limit sometime. The old fellow had been through a good deal, and certainly must have used up much of his giant energy in earlier trials. I wondered vaguely for a few moments when the time would come when his stoical indifference and cruelty would be used up and he become a debtor to nature. How would the old man die? Would he be inscrutable and implacable to the last? It would be a matter of physical force with him, and he appeared pretty tough yet, ready for many a rough fracas, and afraid of nothing.
Yet I doubted whether his courage was any finer than some others who were less reckless and held responsibility as something of value. He finally gave the order to Hawkson, and the deep voice of the mate sounded above the booming, sonorous roar overhead. A heavy tarpaulin was lashed in the mizzen-rigging on the outside, so that the shrouds might make a solid background to hold it against the blast. It was an old hatch-cover, but of heavier cloth than our topsail.
The wheel was rolled hard down just as a heavy squall showed signs of slacking, and a comparative smooth space showed to windward. The old barque came quickly into the trough, and, as she did so, the full force of the hurricane could be felt. Over and over she went until her lee rail disappeared beneath the foam, while above her towered a sea that bade fair to drive her under as it fell aboard. She lay perfectly on end for an instant, the deck being absolutely perpendicular, and her yard-arm beneath the swirl to leeward, and the weight of that rolling hill broke clear across, the larger part of it landing in the sea to starboard.
The shock was terrific. Both fore and main topmasts went out of her and trailed alongside in the smother. There was no sound save the thundering crash of the water, but as soon as the men who had saved themselves could move from their places, we tried to save the ship. Hawkson, Gull, Henry, Richards, Jones, Martin, and the rest made their way forward by holding to the pin-rail, and we cut to clear away the foretopmast alongside. All the time the barque was on end, her hatches under water, and the wild, booming snore of the hurricane roaring over her, sending cataracts of water over her t’gallant-rail. By desperate work we led the wreckage forward, and towed it by a heavy line from the port cat-head. This finally had the effect, together with the tarpaulin aft, of pulling her head into the sea, and after a quarter of an hour, every minute of which I expected to see her go under, she began to right herself.
Too exhausted to speak and half-drowned by the seas, we hung on under the shelter of the forecastle until she once more rode safely into it. I looked into the streaming faces of the men, and wondered how many had gone to leeward that day, and then it seemed to me that slaving for wealth might not be any better than I had originally held it to be. Aloft in that gray pall the scud were whirling past, and I found myself thinking of Tim and the cry of the South Sea. A sailor is apt to get superstitious even without reason, and it struck me that there would be little luck aboard the old pirate on this cruise.
When we had a chance to leave, we found that one dago and the little Dane had disappeared from among us, and, as the gale wore down toward evening, there was a sorry picture of a black barque riding the quick sea of the western ocean, her rigging hanging and trailing to leeward from the stumps of her topmasts, and a half-drowned crew holding on to anything they could.