“I didn’t particularize,” coolly said the narrator, “but I believe it was the flying artillery.”
THE REEFER OF ’76.
———
BY THE “AUTHOR OF CRUIZING IN THE LAST WAR.”
———
THE SHIPWRECK.
The arrival of our battered fleet in the Texal, was the signal for a diplomatic war betwixt the ministers of England, Holland and France. The result of this encounter of wits, was the secret transfer of the captured ships to the latter power, and an order from the Prince of Orange to quit his dominions. Accordingly, Paul Jones, having superseded Landais in command of the Alliance, put to sea on the 27th of December, 1779, and, after running the gauntlet of the channel fleet, and approaching near enough to the Downs to examine its force, reached the roads of Groix on the 10th of February, 1780, in safety. As these things are matters of history, I briefly pass them over, the more readily because I did not myself accompany the commodore; for having found a letter from my captain, lying for me at Holland, requiring my return to Paris, I seized the first opportunity and started for France within a fortnight after the capture of the Serapis.
Our run through the straits was pleasant, and we had every prospect of a speedy voyage until our second day out, when the wind freshened into a gale, and before night it was blowing, as the old tars had it, “great guns and marlinspikes.” Every thing, however, was made fast and clean, and toward midnight I sought my hammock, and in a few moments, with a sailor’s carelessness, had forgotten our danger in sleep. How long I slept I cannot tell, but I was suddenly aroused from my slumbers by the heeling of the ship, and as I started up in my berth, I heard the salt water dashing through the cabin, and roaring in the hold as if the bulk-heads were giving way. The lights were out, and I could see nothing, but I knew by the sound that the water was pouring in a cataract down the companion way, and that all escape therefore by that path was cut off. Could the ship be sinking?—had she broached to?—where were the crew? were the questions that rushed through my mind at that awful moment. I listened a second to hear, if I could, any sign of my fellow passengers in the cabin; but the place appeared to be deserted. Knowing that no time was to be lost, I sprang to the window in the stern, but—Good God! the dead lights were in, and all escape by that way was closed on me. Louder and louder roared the waters into the cabin, already they were dashing their cold spray around me, and in a few seconds they would submerge my berth. Death stared me in the face—death, too, in its most horrid guise. My brain whirled, my knees shook, my skin felt cold as the grave, and my usually buoyant heart sank within me. But these feelings triumphed only for a moment. My native resolution came speedily to my aid, and I determined to die, since die I must, like the old philosopher who wrapped his garments around him and lay down as if to a pleasant sleep. At this instant I suddenly remembered that the cabin had an outlet overhead, and groping my way along, half buried in water the while, I caught hold of the frame work of the binnacle, and dashing the glass out with my hand, raised myself up, and, the next minute, crawled on deck. For an instant—so terrific was the violence of the gale which swept past me—I could neither see, hear, nor stand. The rain and hail beating fiercely against me, pinned me down to the spot which I had first gained, while the thunder of the hurricane that went whistling and roaring by, seemed to forebode the approach of the final day itself. Oceans of water deluged the deck, hissing past me like the scornful laughter of fiends. At length I managed to raise my head and cast a glance at the scene around me. The darkness was almost impenetrable, but sufficient light existed to convince me that the decks were deserted, and that the ship was lying on her beam-ends, with cataracts of water rolling momently over her windward side. Oh! God, what a ruin! Officer and man, passengers and crew, all, all had been swept away by the devouring surge, and I alone was left, preserved almost by a miracle. I gazed to leeward, but only a waste of driving foam met my eye—I looked astern, nothing but the green monsters of the deep, rolling mountain high, were seen. At this instant another deluge of foam whistled past, blinding my eyes with spray, and jerking me with a giant’s power from my hold. Buried in brine, bruised, despairing, and almost stunned, I thought my hour had come, and breathing a momentary prayer to heaven for mercy, I resigned myself to death. Suddenly my hand struck against something, which, with an instinctive love for life, I grasped. My progress was instantaneously checked, and, although the resistance almost snapped my arms from their sockets, I still clung to the object I had caught. When the billow had whirled past, and the spray had ceased to blind my eyes, I saw that I had seized one of the posts of the bulwarks. Taking advantage of a momentary lull, I crept to a place of greater security, and sat down to ponder over my chances of escape.
All through that awful night I clung to my frail support, expecting momently to be swept from it into eternity. Language cannot describe my feelings. No pen can paint the horrors of those long and dreary hours. The air grew intensely cold: the rain became hail. The sky, if possible, lowered more gloomily, and the billows rolled higher and higher around me, while the deep tones of the tempest mingled with the chafing of the surges, rose up over all like the wild choral symphony which we dream of as forever rising from the world of ruin and despair. Borne aloft on the waves, or hurried down into the abyss, drenched, bruised, and bewildered, I saw no gleam of hope. Beneath me was the boiling deep—above me the sky seemed settling bodily down. Now the gale whistled shrilly past, or now wailed moaningly away to leeward. Darkness and terror were all around me.