Wind always N. by W.; we are drifting close hauled S.W.
There was watery sunlight this forenoon, now in the afternoon the wind is even stronger, and it is dull with spits of rain, and spindrift; everything is quivering, and throbbing, with the strain, and we shall have to take in staysail. I think of my first whaling voyage many years ago, when for twenty days we lay hove to, out west of Ireland about Rockall. Days of gale are totting up for this trip now! And yet our waist is full of water only now and then! On that old Balæna, barque-rigged, and twice as big as this little St Ebba, it was knee-deep on an average, and waist-high at times. This boat is marvellously dry; of course we planned her from a very seaworthy type of boat, the Norsk pilot-boat shape such as those we saw come into Balta Sound last year; after they had been three months north of Shetland, they had never taken a drop of sea-water on board, and we think we have improved on them.
As afternoon wore on the wind grew very heavy indeed, and the sea was very high. It was Henriksen’s worst experience of the North Atlantic. We watched on the bridge all afternoon, and took in the reefed foresail, so we have only the close-reefed mainsail, and we watched it anxiously lest it should burst. But it is of new strongest sailcloth, Greenock make, and it held.
The watch taking in foresail was a pleasant sight to see. The young fellows, all deep-sea sailors, sprang at the boom like kittens and struggled with the billowing hard wet canvas, tooth and nail, till it was brailed up. I was too cold and wet to get my camera, but what a scene, say, for a cinematograph—figures on deck swaying at the halyards and figures clinging pick-a-back to the sail on the boom!
Oh, it was a beast of a day! even though the wave effects were fine; of about five or six I thought each would be our last. But we lay so far over with gunwales under so that we simply shot to leeward with a heavy sea, so there was much “keel water” which, rising from under us to windward, seemed to prevent the waves breaking over our beam.
The crew are all taking turns at air-pumping; they kept at it all day yesterday, and till one o’clock to-day, and we are soon going to see if the pressure will start the engine—it is rather critical.
CHAPTER VI
We drifted about ninety miles S.W. in the three days’ storm, S.W. of Norway, and now are just the same distance from Lerwick as when we started.
Nine watches with the engine going will take us there.