About midnight, when the starboard watch, to which I belonged, was below, the boatswain’s whistle was heard, followed by the shrill cry of “All hands take in sail! jump, men, and save the ship!”
Springing from our hammocks, we found the frigate leaning over to it so steeply, that it was with difficulty we could climb the ladders leading to the upper deck.
Here the scene was awful. The vessel seemed to be sailing on her side. The main-deck guns had several days previous been run in and housed, and the portholes closed, but the lee carronades on the quarter-deck and forecastle were plunging through the sea, which undulated over them in milk-white billows of foam. With every lurch to leeward the yard-arm-ends seemed to dip in the sea, while forward the spray dashed over the bows in cataracts, and drenched the men who were on the fore-yard. By this time the deck was alive with the whole strength of the ship’s company, five hundred men, officers and all, mostly clinging to the weather bulwarks. The occasional phosphorescence of the yeasting sea cast a glare upon their uplifted faces, as a night fire in a populous city lights up the panic-stricken crowd.
In a sudden gale, or when a large quantity of sail is suddenly to be furled, it is the custom for the first lieutenant to take the trumpet from whoever happens then to be officer of the deck. But Mad Jack had the trumpet that watch; nor did the first lieutenant now seek to wrest it from his hands. Every eye was upon him, as if we had chosen him from among us all, to decide this battle with the elements, by single combat with the spirit of the Cape; for Mad Jack was the saving genius of the ship, and so proved himself that night. I owe this right hand, that at this moment is flying over my sheet, and all my present being to Mad Jack. The ship’s bows were now butting, battering, ramming and thundering over and upon the head seas, and with a horrible wallowing sound our whole hull was rolling in the trough of the foam. The gale came athwart the deck, and every sail seemed bursting with its wild breath.
At the Wheel During a Storm.
All the quartermasters, and several of the forecastle-men, were swarming round the double-wheel on the quarter-deck, some jumping up and down, with their hands upon the spokes; for the whole helm and galvanized keel were fiercely feverish with the life imparted to them by the tempest.
“Hard up the helm!” shouted Captain Claret, bursting from his cabin like a ghost, in his nightdress.
“Curse you!” raged Mad Jack to the quartermasters; “hard down, hard down, I say.”
Contrary orders! But Mad Jack’s were obeyed. His object was to throw the ship into the wind, so as the better to admit of close-reefing the topsails. But though the halyards were let go, it was impossible to clew down the yards, owing to the enormous horizontal strain on the canvas. It now blew a hurricane. The spray flew over the ship in floods. The gigantic masts seemed about to snap under the world-wide strain of the three entire topsails.