Harper's Round Table, September 17, 1895

by Various

It blew up a gale of wind that afternoon, and I heard the mate say that the storm experienced during the week that was past had recurved, and that we would get it worse than ever on its back track. To prevent the boat from foundering, we unstepped the mast, made a span to it by securing a length of rope to each end, and to the middle of this bridle we bent the boat's painter. Then we dropped this sea-anchor over the bows, and rode to it, the strain upon the painter keeping the head of the boat to the seas that rolled down on us.

When night settled upon the deep it shut out one of the wildest sights of ocean-lashed waters that I had ever seen; but the darkness only intensified the terror, for in the blackness we would feel the frail boat swung with dizzy velocity up and up and up on some mountainous sea, as though she was never going to stop; then, while the great seething crest was roaring in a thousand diabolical voices about us, she would drop down, down, down with a motion that was like falling through space.

It might have been the middle of the night when, worn out from the labor of bailing without intermission for many hours, I threw myself down in the bows of the boat, and locking my arms around one of the thwarts to keep from being pitched about, I fell into an exhausted sleep. I don't know how long I slept, but I was brought to my senses by a sea bursting into the boat, and I found my legs wedged under the seat as I sat half suffocated on the flooring with the water up to my armpits. Looking aft, I could see by the phosporescent glow of the breaking seas that no shapes of men were visible against the background of sky. My companions were gone.

The gunwale of the boat was within a few inches of the water, and it needed only the spume of another wave falling in the boat to sink her. There was no time for indulging in grief over the loss of my shipmates—there was time only for work, and very little for that, if I was to save my life. Tearing off my cap, I used it as a bailer and worked desperately.

At last another morning came, and with it the gale broke; but I allowed the boat to remain hove to during that day and following night, so as to give the seas a chance to go down.

The second morning dawned clear and beautiful, with the ocean subsided into long even swells, and the wind settled down again to the regular trades. Most of the provisions had been ruined by the sea that had filled the boat, but I found two water-tight tins filled with pilot-bread that promised to supply my needs for some time to come. The fresh water in the boat-breakers had kept sweet owing to the bungs being in place.

I had opened one of the tins, and was sitting on a thwart making a breakfast from its contents, when, happening to look astern, I made out, not more than a mile away, the wreck of a small vessel. Everything about the foremast was standing below the cross-trees, but only the splintered stumps of her main and mizzen masts were to be seen above the deck, while the spars themselves, together with their gear, were hanging in a wild confusion over the side. I got in my drag, restepped the mast, set the sail, and bore down upon the wreck. As I drew close to her I expected to see some signs of her crew, for the vessel sat fairly high in the water, and looked seaworthy enough to be navigated into port by making sail upon the fore, and rigging up jury-masts on the two stumps abaft—plenty of material for such to be found in the raffle alongside. No evidence, however, of life showed itself when I rounded under the stern, reading the name Mercedes in large white letters. Letting fly my sheet, I caught the leeward chain-plates, and jumping on board with the painter, I secured the same to a belaying-pin, and looked about me.

I was at once sensible that there was some water in the hold by the peculiar motion of the vessel as she rose and fell to the seas that underran her; but at the same time it was apparent that there could not be anything like a dangerous quantity, otherwise the plane of the deck would have floated much closer to the surface of the sea. Without regarding the nationality of the name, it was clear to me that the vessel was either a Portuguese or Italian trader by the rainbow character of her paint-work, the slovenliness of the rigging, that was yet almost intact upon the fore, and, in spite of the drenching that she had received, the unmistakable evidences of dirt everywhere. There were no boats left, but whether they had been crushed in the wreck of the masts or had received the crew of the barkentine—for such I saw had been her rig—I could not tell.

Entering the cabin, I overhauled the four state-rooms it contained, finding in three of them nothing but such odds and ends as are peculiar to sailors' chests, and in the fourth room, which had been used as a pantry, quite an assortment of boxes and barrels of provisions, although there was proof that some of them had been broken into and rummaged quite recently.

Then I went on deck again and lifted off one of the main hatch covers. No cargo of any nature was to be seen, nothing but a mass of black oily water washing from side to side. It was plain that the vessel was in ballast, that she had sprung a leak in the last gale of wind, that her crew had become frightened, had given her up for lost, and taken to the boats. It was also clear that the leak had stopped itself in some manner—possibly when the old tub had ceased straining after the sea went down—and that if I could pump out the hull I might be able to put her before the wind by making sail on the fore, and so, with the favoring trade winds, let the Mercedes drift along to the port dead away to leeward.