The Chief Mate's Yarns: Twelve Tales of the Sea

by T. Jenkins Hains

The girl sat with him often, and they talked of other things than shipwreck. She was beautiful—there was no question about it. The glow of returning strength made her more lovely. James found himself wondering at her. She had been the only human being so far that would condescend to speak to him without contempt. He was lonely, very lonely, and the girl seemed to feel he needed some one to cheer him up. She did not realize his weakness. He was very strong to her; a strong man who had suffered from an accident, due, perhaps, to his carelessness, but not to criminal negligence. But he knew, he knew, and could not tell.

The days passed, and the terror of the thing he had in his mind began to fade slightly. He knew he must die. The sailor, his shipmate who had been picked up with him, had told every one in the schooner that he, James, was on watch and was responsible for a terrible disaster, the death of a great number of persons. James saw it in their looks. He knew he would never get a ship again, never hold a place among white men. Yes, he must die.

It gave him a sort of grim satisfaction to feel that he was just to live a certain length of time, that he would cut that short at the last moment. He wondered how a prisoner felt when the sentence of death was pronounced upon him. He had pronounced it upon himself. It was a genuine relief, for the vision of those terror-stricken, drowning passengers was always with him night and day, except when he was in a dreamless sleep. That sleep seemed to be portentous of what he would face.

The days turned to weeks and the weeks to months. The voyage was long and the winds light. They were ninety days to the latitude of the Falklands when they struck a furious "williwaw" from the hills of Patagonia. The schooner was in a bad fix. She was lightly manned; and, in spite of the addition of James and the seaman from the wreck, she held her canvas too long.

The struggle was short but terrific. The fore-topsail blew away and saved the mast; but the main held, and the topmast buckled and finally went by the board. The headsails had been lowered, but they blew out from the gaskets, and the jibboom snapped short off under the tremendous threshing of flying canvas. The maintopmast, hanging by the backstays, fell across the triatic stay, and the steel of the backstays cut into the spring until it finally parted under the jerks, and the mizzen was left to stand alone. It went by the board, and the great mast, snapping short at the partners, went over the side, and smashed and banged there at each heave of the ship.

There was desperate work to do to save the vessel. Her master did wonders and showed his skill; but the most dangerous and deadly task of going to leeward to cut adrift the lanyards was left to James. No one else would go.

James was a powerful man, and had won his way to an officer's berth by endeavor, not by nepotism. His hope was that he might be killed in the struggle. He dared anything, tried to do the impossible—and did it. How he succeeded in clearing away the wreck of that mast remains a mystery to those who watched him. He was almost dead when dragged back and the schooner floated clear.

The girl had seen the whole affair from the glass of the companionway. She had held her breath, almost fainted again and again at the sight of James in that fight for life. To her it was simply grand, tremendous—she had never been touched by a man's heroism before.

When it was all over and the schooner, dismantled and storm-driven, lay riding down the giant seas that swept around the Horn in the Pacific Antarctic Drift, she watched over and attended the officer as he lay in his bunk with a broken arm, a cut across the head, and the toes of one foot gone. She knew that there was something behind the will to do as James had done. But she could not fathom it, could not tell why he was unresponsive. He lay silent mostly, and seldom looked at her. Yet he was sane in his conversation, not delirious in any way. It worried her. It caused that peculiar thing that is in every woman to make the man she admires responsive. And the more she showed her feelings, the less he seemed to care. It ended the way it usually does under such conditions. She fairly worshiped him.

After that storm the weather grew very calm. The dark ocean seemed to be at rest for a spell. The schooner was now to the south'ard of the Falklands, and the captain decided that he would not venture around the Horn in the desperate condition he was in. Stanley Harbor was under his lee, and he bore away for it. Then, with the perversity of the southern zone, the wind hauled to the eastward and blew steadily for a week; blew right in their faces.