Nothing short of a case like this could have induced Captain Meade to launch a boat off Cape Horn, for the huge waves and the liability to sudden squalls make it a perilous proceeding at all times. Mr. Marsh took command of the gig with a carefully selected crew, but it required half an hours’ maneuvering to launch her. At length a successful start was made, and the gig went racing up the side of a big sea, was poised giddily on its crest, and then darted down the incline as though bound for the bottom. On she went, her crew rowing like demons, while two men bailed out the water that constantly threatened to swamp her.
As the rescuers neared the sinking vessel, the mate bawled “Wreck ahoy! what bark is that?”
“The Dundee, of Liverpool, bound from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso. We are foundering.”
“We are the American ship Sagamore, from New York for San Francisco. Heave us a rope and we’re ready for you.”
The gig was now on the lee side of the bark, and as near the stern as prudence would allow; so the men rested on their oars while Mr. Marsh deftly caught the rope flung from the wreck by her captain. In order to enter the boat it was necessary for those on the Dundee to slide down the rope, and then be hauled aboard when the end was reached. The steward and three seamen constituted the first load; descending in safety, one by one, though most of them were submerged twice before they were at length pulled into the boat. Two seamen, an apprentice and the captain remained on the wreck, the latter declaring his intention of standing by his craft to the last, though he well knew she was about to take the final plunge. Already that uncanny moaning sound heard only on a foundering vessel was ascending from the black depths of the hold, as the rising waters forced out the sustaining air through every crevice.
It was a hard pull back to the Sagamore,—against the wind all the way,—and while the mate steered the heavily-laden gig, the steward narrated the story of the catastrophe. The Dundee, commanded by Captain Murray, had sailed from Buenos Ayres without a cargo, taking aboard for ballast eight hundred tons of dirt scooped from the river bottom; and to this improper ballast the disaster was due. She labored heavily during the first day of the hurricane, and sprang a leak in several places. The incoming water soon converted the ballast into a liquid mass, which surged about in the hold, finally hurling her upon her side, and rendering her unmanageable. While in this position, great seas swept over her, smashing all the boats and loosening heavy spars, which washed about the decks, knocking down the crew. Two sailors and the carpenter received broken limbs in this manner, and before they could be rescued, all three were washed into the sea and drowned before the eyes of their shipmates. The mate was killed the following night by the falling main mast, and to complete the horror of the situation, the pumps became choked with mud, rendering them useless. With water pouring into every open seam, those aboard the settling bark had resigned all hope, and were passively waiting for death when the Sagamore hove in sight.
The ship’s side having been safely reached, the rescued men were quickly drawn up to the deck, and the boat again started for the Dundee. It was a desperate chance whether she remained above water until the gig could reach her; and each time the little craft was lifted upon a wave the mate looked anxiously towards the wreck, half expecting her to have vanished while his boat was in the trough. What kept the bark afloat during this interval was a mystery, but float she did, though suspended as it were by a single hair above the fathomless depths.
When the gig brought up under her stern, the rope was again placed in position, and the apprentice told to descend. The youth was half way to the boat when he became panic-stricken at sight of a great sea coming on him, and cried for help. The wreck rolled heavily towards the boat, slackening the rope still further; the wave rolled over the apprentice, and when it passed, there was the rope all on the surface, but the hands that had grasped it a moment before were gone. The bark’s captain ran to the rail with a coil of rope ready to fling to the youth the instant he should appear, but he was not seen, and hope of his rescue had about gone, when Gene, with a sudden exclamation, reached over the boat’s side. He had the drowning man by the hair! After a struggle which nearly capsized the gig, the apprentice was dragged into it, more dead than alive. Then the two remaining seamen made the trip without accident, and the captain was ready—the last man to leave.
He paused an instant, his eyes slowly taking in every detail of the familiar scene. For fourteen years had he been master of that bark, and even his unsympathetic nature was stirred to its very depths at the moment of leaving her forever. Now, in these last seconds of their long association, a hundred past events were kindled into life again, and flashed through his brain like the successive views of a panorama.
Hastily turning away, he tossed into the boat a package containing his sextant, a favorite chronometer, and the bark’s papers. He grasped the rope,—was soon in the water,—at the boat’s side,—and then safely on board. At a signal from the mate, Gene severed the line with his sheath-knife, and the Dundee was abandoned to her fate.