"Three years ago," he said, "I was in Hamburg in command of the steamship Bristow. She is a vessel of about 1200 tons, and is in the carrying trade, though she occasionally takes half a dozen passengers at low rates. I was ready to get under way for New York when a man, accompanied by a boy about the age of your grandson there, came aboard and applied for passage. He said that he had come to Europe on business, and had received word that his wife was very sick in New York. He was anxious to get home and my ship was the first that was going. I advised him to wait three days and take the Hamburg-American liner, which would arrive fully five days before us; but he said he had not money enough to go that way except in the steerage, and he could not think of doing that because his boy's health was none too good. So, of course, I agreed to take the two. The boy looked up at me and said,
"'Thank you, sir; and please make the ship hurry, because mamma is waiting for us.'
"I promised him I'd do my best, and, indeed, I did make up my mind to push the ship as she'd never been pushed before. We sailed at three o'clock on June 28th—I remember that date well enough. It was a lowering damp afternoon, with a brisk southwesterly wind, and as soon as we got fairly out into the North Sea the ship began to butt into a nasty chop that sent the spray flying over her bows. But I was able to escape the worst of it by hugging the Holland coast, and so got down into the English Channel in some comfort. But now it was no longer possible to hug the coast, for that would have carried me too far out of my course. However, the Bristow made good progress till we passed Fastnet Rock and got well out into the Atlantic. And there our troubles began. The morning of our third day out dawned with a hard low sky, a dead calm, and a deep, long, oily swell underrunning the ship. She rolled pitiably indeed. The barometer began to fall, and the wind rose and became very unsettled. I think that before noon it blew from every point of the compass, and some of the gusts were regular white squalls. The swell was running from the south, but the wind was chiefly from the west, southwest, and northwest. Toward evening the wind settled down, and by dark it was dead calm. But the terrific swells that swept up from the south, the gradual fall of the barometer, and the lurid state of the sky told me that there was a lot of trouble ahead of us yet. We were about 400 miles west of Fastnet at ten o'clock, and I lay down, giving my first officer instructions to call me in case the wind rose. Just before midnight I was aroused, and went on deck to find the wind coming in short angry blasts from the nor'west. At midnight it came out with the full force of a hurricane right in our teeth. In a short time a terrible confused sea was running. It was a frightful night. At three o'clock in the morning a thunder-storm swept over with the gale. Fierce lightning and a deluge of rain combined to make an appalling scene. Daylight found the ship reeling and staggering over huge jagged walls of water that loomed up ahead of her as if they would swallow her. Just after four o'clock a fearful sea fell bodily over the starboard quarter and stove in one side of the cabin, filling it with water. I saw that it was madness to try to drive the ship against such weather, and I hove her to. When I went to my breakfast, Mr. Howard, my passenger, and his son were there, very quiet and with white faces.
"'Will the ship sink, Captain?' asked the boy.
"'Oh no,' I answered; 'she's all right.'
"'But we sha'n't get home to mamma so soon,' murmured the boy, mournfully."
FOR TWO WEEKS, INCH BY INCH, THE "BRISTOW" FOUGHT AGAINST A SERIES OF WESTERLY GALES.
"I had hove the ship to so as to bring the damaged side of the deck-house to leeward, and I set the carpenter at work repairing it. We were hove to for twenty-eight hours, and then, the weather moderating somewhat, I started the Bristow ahead at half speed. We had drifted back fully seventy-five miles, and as we did not make more than three knots an hour ahead, it took us fully a day to recover the lost ground. Although the force of the wind had abated, it was still blowing a gale, and the sea was sufficiently heavy to impede our progress very much. In all my experience at sea I have never met with such heart-breaking weather. If the wind had only shifted to our beam I would have been profoundly grateful, while a hurricane on our quarter, disturbing at any other time, would have filled me with joy. That boy's pale anxious face and the thought of the sick mother at home haunted me as I walked the reeling bridge or clung to its rail, and held my breath when some green wall crashed down upon our forecastle deck. But the westward sky seemed to be made of chilled steel, and out of its pitiless lips blew one gale after another, and all full of a biting cold that made the name of summer a foolish jest. For two weeks, inch by inch, the Bristow, running her engine at its full power, fought her way against a series of westerly gales. The decks were white with crusted salt, and the iron-work became browned with rust, until the ship began to look old and haggard from her struggle with the elements. But the worst had not come yet. On the seventeenth day out, while I was at my dinner, the pale-faced boy and his father sitting opposite to me and gazing at me in mournful silence, the chief engineer came to me with a grave countenance, and asked me to step aside that he might speak with me.
"'Captain,' said he, 'I am sorry to tell you that the coal in our bunkers is getting very low, and that unless we make better headway it will run out before we make port.'