"Slowly the vessel's head came up, and she righted herself. She was now close-hauled, and she began to thresh out to windward with a fearful bellowing of the wind out of the straining main-topsail. There was no sea yet; on the contrary, the terrific force of the wind cut down the great swells, and blew the ocean out flat in a sheet of ghostly foam. But that did not last long. The sea began to run, and the Ellen Burgee began to rear and plunge over the ragged crests, and to thunder down into the black hollows that looked like clefts extending to the bottom of the ocean. At daybreak a mad, a crazy sea presented itself to the sight. The effect of the gale blowing at right angles to the original swell was to pile up the billows in great writhing pyramidal masses. The ship labored and groaned fearfully. Tons of water broke over the forecastle deck, and the Captain was alarmed lest the deck seams should open. At six bells in the morning watch the main-topsail blew out of the bolt-ropes with a report like a gun's, and went swirling away into the flying spoondrift down on our lee quarter. A stay-sail was set to do the main-topsail's work, but nothing would prevent the ship from falling so far off at times that the seas broke on her decks in masses. All day long she was driven by the wind, and pounded by the seas. Our drift was something frightful, but it was not much out of our course. At four bells in the first watch, ten o'clock at night—but I forget you know all the bells—the carpenter reported a foot of water in the hold. Then began the heart-breaking business of working the pumps. All night long I heard the weary clank, clank, under-running, as it were, the yelling of the wind, the roaring of the sea, and the groaning of the stricken ship. At daylight the gale broke, and a few hours later there was only a gigantic swell to tell the story of the storm. But the Ellen Burgee had received her death warrant. She was slowly filling under us in spite of all that we could do. The Captain gave orders to prepare to abandon ship. The crew was at work at this when a new idea seemed to strike the skipper.
"'We can't be many miles from St. Paul's Rocks,' he said; and he set to work to make some calculations. The result was that a man was sent to the masthead to look for the rocks, sail was made on the ship, and the pumps were manned again. St. Paul's Rocks, you must know, are a small cluster of rocky projections, rising at the highest point about sixty feet above the sea. They are in latitude 56' N., longitude 29° 20' W., and our old man figured that we weren't over fifteen miles away from them. Half an hour later the masthead lookout sighted the rocks, and a little later we sighted them from the decks.
"'My idea is,' said the Captain to the mate, 'to run the ship on the rocks. That will enable us to save all our dunnage and all the boats, and give us a breathing-spell to decide what's the next best move.'
"The mate agreed that it was a great scheme. The Captain went aloft to pick out a place to run the ship ashore. He found a good spot where her bow would wedge up on the rocks, so that she would not slip off and sink, and he headed her for it. She struck pretty hard, and the foretop-gallant-mast went by the board, taking the flying jib-boom along with it; but we did not mind that, for we found that the ship had taken the ground for nearly half her length, and was in what you might call a mighty comfortable berth for a sinking craft. Two of our boats were smashed by the falling spars, but the long-boat was all right, and that was what the Captain counted on to take us off the rocks.
"Now the nearest land to St. Paul's Rocks is the north-eastern extremity of Brazil, Cape St. Roque, and that's something over 500 good sea miles away. I was only a small boy, but I had sense enough to know that a voyage of that length in a ship's boat would be a desperate undertaking, and even if successful, sure to embrace terrible hardship and exposure. The Captain and the mate knew it, too, and they decided to remain right where they were for a few days on the chance of sighting a passing ship. That was a mighty poor chance, too, for very few vessels pass within sighting distance of St. Paul's Rocks. The great circle track from England to the Cape of Good Hope lies between fifty and sixty miles to the westward of them, and vessels are more likely to deviate to the westward of the track than to the eastward. Every sensible navigator gives those rocks a wide berth, anyhow. It was when I heard the Captain and the mate talking those matters over that I conceived my great fire-balloon scheme. I didn't say a word, but fished out a lot of stout wire that was aboard the ship, got my stock of tissue paper together, and set about making one of the biggest fire-balloons on record. It was a whopper, and no mistake, for, you see, I wanted it to have carrying and travelling power. When I had it finished, I secured a stout bottle. Then I wrote this brief and direct message on a piece of brown paper:
"'The ship Ellen Burgee is on St. Paul's Rocks. All hands safe and well, but would like to get away.'
"I put that in the bottle and corked it up tight. Then with a stiff piece of wire and a square of red bunting I made a flag, which I stuck up on top of the cork. Next I made a wire bridle, and swung the bottle below the neck of the balloon, so far down that the flag could not catch fire. I ballasted the bottom of the bottle first, and experimented with it so that it would float upright, even with the weight of wire hanging to it. The Captain saw me at work, and said,
"'What are you up to, Elias?'
"'Oh,' I said, 'I'm getting up a balloon ascension to kill time.'
"That night, as luck would have it, there was a nice gentle southeasterly breeze, and I made ready to send up my balloon. The Captain and the crew gathered around me and chaffed me a little, but I didn't mind that.