“The sight which all of us who weren’t busy gazed upon, over the larboard bulwarks, was terrible to see; ’twas half dark, though the sun dropping behind the haze-bank, made it glimmer and redden. The dark heap of clouds had first lengthened out blacker and blacker, and was rising slowly in the sky like a mighty arch, till you saw their white edges below, and a ghastly white space behind, out of which the mist and scud began to fly. Next minute a long sigh came into her jib and foresail, then the black bow of cloud partly sank again, and a blaze of lightning came out all round her, showing you every face on deck, the inside of the round-house aft, with the Indian judge standing in it, his hand to his eyes—and the land far away, to the very swell rolling onto it. Then the thunder broke overhead in the gloom, in one fearful sudden crack, that you seemed to hear through every corner of cabins and forecastle below—and the wet back-fins of twenty sharks or so, that had risen out of the inky surface, vanished as suddenly.
“The Indiaman had sheered almost broadside on to the clouds, her jib was still up, and I knew the next time the clouds rose we should fairly have it. Flash after flash came, and clap after clap of thunder, such as you hear before a tornado—yet the chief officer wasn’t to be seen, and the others seemed uncertain what to do first; while everyone began to wonder and pass along questions where he could be. In fact, he had disappeared. For my part, I thought it very strange he stayed so long; but there wasn’t a moment to lose. I jumped down off the poop-stairs, walked forward on the quarter-deck, and said coolly to the men nearest me, ‘Run and haul down that jib yonder—set the spanker here, aft. You’ll have her taken slap on her beam: quick, my lads!’ The men did so at once. Macleod was calling out anxiously for Mr. Finch. ‘Stand by the anchors there!’ I sang out, ‘to let go the starboard one, the moment she swings head to wind!’ The Scotch mate turned his head; but Rickett’s face, by the next flash, showed he saw the good of it, and there was no leisure for arguing, especially as I spoke in a way to be heard. I walked to the wheel, and got hold of Jacobs to take the weather helm.
“We were all standing ready, at the pitch of expecting it. Westwood, too, having appeared again by this time beside me, I whispered to him to run forward and look after the anchors, when someone came hastily up the after-hatchway, with a glazed hat and pilot-coat on, stepped straight to the binnacle, looked in behind me, then at the black bank of cloud, then aloft. Of course I supposed it was the mate again, but didn’t trouble myself to glance at him further, when ‘Hold on with the anchors!’ he sang out in a loud voice. ‘Hold on there for your lives!’ Heavens! it was the captain himself!
“At this, of course, I stood aside at once; and he shouted again, ‘Hoist the jib and fore-topmast-staysail—stand by to set fore-course!’ By Jove! this was the way to pay the ship head off, instead of stern off, from the blast when it came—and to let her drive before it at no trifle of a rate, wherever that might take her. ‘Down with that spanker, Mr. Macleod, d’ye hear?’ roared Captain Williamson again; and, certainly, I did wonder what he meant to do with the ship. But his manner was so decided, and ’twas so natural for the captain to strain a point to come on deck in the circumstances, that I saw he must have some trick of seamanship above me, or some special knowledge of the coast; and I waited in a state of the greatest excitement for the first stroke of the tornado. He waved the second and third mates forward to their posts,—the Indiaman sheering and backing, like a frightened horse, to the long slight swell and the faint flow of the land-air. The black arch to windward began to rise again, showing a terrible white stare reaching deep in, and a blue dart of lightning actually ran zigzag before our glaring fore-to’-gallant-mast. Suddenly, the captain had looked at me, and we faced each other by the gleam; and, quiet, easy-going man as he was commonly, it just flashed across me there was something extraordinarily wild and raised in his pale visage, strange as the air about us made everyone appear. He gave a stride towards me, shouting, ‘Who are—’ when the thunder-clap took the words out of his tongue, and the next moment the tornado burst upon us, fierce as the wind from a cannon’s mouth.
“For one minute the Seringapatam heeled over to her starboard streak, almost broadside on, and her spars towards the land—all on her beam was a long ragged white gush of light and mist pouring out under the black brow of the clouds, with a trampling, eddying roar up into the sky. The swell plunged over her weather-side like the first break of a dam, and as we scrambled up to the bulwarks to hold on for bare life, we saw a roller fit to swamp us, coming on out of the sheet of foam, when crash went mizzen-topmast and main-to’-gallant-mast; the ship payed swiftly off by help of her head-sails, and, with a leap like a harpooned whale, off she drove fair before the tremendous sweep of the blast.
“The least yaw in her course, and she’d have never risen, unless every stick went out of her. I laid my shoulder to the wheel with Jacobs, and Captain Williamson screamed through his trumpet into the men’s ears, and waved his hands to ride down the foresheets as far as they’d go; which kept her right before it, though the sail could be but half set, and she rather flew than ran—the sea one breadth of white foam back to the gushes of mist, not having power to rise higher yet. Had the foresail been stretched, ’twould have blown off like a cloud. I looked at the captain: he was standing in the lee of the round-house, straight upright, though now and then peering eagerly forward, his lips firm, one hand on a belaying-pin, the other in his breast—nothing but determination in his manner: yet once or twice he started, and glanced fiercely to the after-hatchway near, as if something from below might chance to thwart him. I can’t express my contrary feelings, betwixt a sort of hope and sheer horror. We were driving right towards the land, at thirteen or fourteen knots to the hour—yet could there actually be some harborage hereaway, or that river the quartermaster of the Iris had mentioned, and Captain Williamson know of it?
“Something struck me as wonderfully strange in the whole matter, and puzzling to desperation—still, I trusted to the captain’s experience. The coast was scarce to be seen ahead of us, lying black against an uneven streak of glimmer, as she rushed like fury before the deafening howl of the wind; and right away before our lee-beam I could see the light blowing, as it were, across beyond the headland I had noticed, where the smoke in the bush seemed to be still curling, half-smothered, along the flat in the lee of the hills, as if in green wood, or sheltered as yet from seaweed, though once or twice a quick flicker burst up in it.
“All at once the gust of the tornado was seen to pour on it like a long blast from some huge bellows, and up it flashed—the yellow flame blazed into the smoke, spread away behind the point, and the ruddy brown smoke blew whitening over it—when, almighty power! what did I see as it lengthened in, but part after part of the old Bob’s landmarks creep out ink-black before the flare and the streak of sky together—first the low line of ground, then the notch in the block, the two rocks like steps, and the sugar-loaf shape of the headland, to the very mop-headed knot of trees on its rise! No doubt Captain Williamson was steering for it; but it was far too much on our starboard bow, and in half an hour at this rate we should drive right into the surf you saw running along to the coast ahead—so I signed to Jacob for God’s sake to edge her off as nicely as was possible.
“Captain Williamson caught my motion. ‘Port! port, sirrah!’ he sang out sternly. ‘Back with the helm, d’ye hear?’ and pulling out a pistol, he levelled it at me with one hand, while he held a second in the other. ‘Land! land!’ shouted he, and from the lee of the round-house it came more like a shriek than a shout. ‘I’ll be there though a thousand mutineers—’ His eye was like a wild beast’s. That moment the truth glanced across me—this was the green leaf, no doubt, the Scotch mate talked so mysteriously of. The man was mad! The land-fever was upon him, as I’d seen it before in men long off the African coast; and he stood eyeing me with one foot hard stamped before him. ’Twas no use trying to be heard, and the desperation of the moment gave me a thought of the sole thing to do. I took off my hat in the light of the binnacle, bowed, and looked him straight in the face with a smile; when his eye wavered, he slowly lowered his pistol, then laughed, waving his hand towards the land to leeward, as if, but for the gale, you’d have heard him cheer. At the instant I sprang behind him with the slack of a rope, and grappled his arms fast, though he’d got the furious power of a madman; and during half a minute ’twas wrestle for life with me. But the line was round him, arm and leg, and I made it fast, throwing him heavily on the deck just as one of the mates with some of the crew were struggling aft, by help of the belaying-pins, against the hurricane, having caught a glimpse of the thing by the binnacle light. They looked from me to the captain. The ugly top-man made a sign, as much as to say, ‘Knock the fellow down;’ but the whole lot hung back before the couple of pistol-barrels I handled. The Scotch mate seemed awfully puzzled; and others of the men, who knew from Jacobs what I was, came shoving along, evidently aware what a case we were in.
