“Isn’t this as bad a gale as you were ever in?” asked Hartley. “They were stretching life-lines on the quarter-deck when we came below, which is certainly unusual.”
The mate looked at him a minute, and then burst out irrelevantly, “I’d give a month’s pay to have the son of a sea-cook here who wrote ‘A life on the ocean wave.’ Hang me if I wouldn’t heave him overboard!” And he proceeded to spread a blanket on the floor before the stove, brought a pillow from his room, and threw himself down in his clothes without more words.
The passengers spent the evening at the cabin windows, watching the booming seas roll on board. Both knew they were in for a night of it, and upon retiring, took the precaution to place the “weatherboards” in the front side of their berths, that they might not be pitched out before morning.
Under two topsails and a staysail, the ship tore through the water like a race horse; plunging madly forward, while the big seas astern chased her as a pack of wolves might pursue their prey. The distinctive feature of this gale was that it came from the southeast, instead of from the west, as all the previous ones had done, and was, therefore, a fair wind. The one danger now was, lest it should increase to such a degree that the ship would be unable longer to run before it, thus losing the benefit of a gale which, had it blown with less fury, would have carried her flying across the 50th parallel in twenty-four hours.
Captain Meade was up all night, anxiously noting the behavior of the ship, and calculating over and over the chances of being able to keep on before the gale. Two of the three remaining sails had been furled when the watches were changed at midnight, yet still that six thousand tons of hull and cargo was driven through the water at a rate almost beyond belief. Fast though she went, the seas behind were beginning to travel more swiftly still, and already two had broken over the stern. Anxious as the captain was to go on, he was too good a seaman to disregard these warnings. In another hour the Sagamore might be “pooped” at the rate the sea was running, and so, after consulting with Mr. Marsh, he decided that the ship must be hove to. He did not come to this conclusion without great reluctance and some foreboding, for with the great sea which was now on, the mere act of turning the ship around was attended with great risk. In fact, when the mate was asked for his opinion, he did not hesitate to say that he considered running before the gale preferable to attempting to heave the ship to. Better to stand the chance of being swamped, he contended, than to try an operation which might result in throwing the Sagamore upon her beam ends in the trough of that mountainous sea. This contingency was what Captain Meade also feared, but he decided that of the two dangers, going about was the least.
Accordingly, soon after daybreak, Mr. Marsh bawled, “Wear ship,” following this order with “Port fore brace!”
The mate was clinging to the ladder on the lee side of the forward house when he gave these orders, and before his watch started to execute them, he spoke a few words of warning. “Now, men, you all know there’s an ugly sea running, so look out for yourselves, and don’t shift about without holding fast to the life-lines. Port fore brace! Andrew, you stand by the starboard brace ready to slack away.”
Jack and Montana were at the wheel, and Jumbo was at the lookout. All the others save Andrew, pulled on the brace until the mate shouted “Belay! Now haul in your slack to starboard.” They started to cross the swimming deck, the sea being then on the beam. Some had reached the starboard brace, others were in the middle of the deck; while Gene, who had stopped to make the port brace fast, was not a third of the distance across. At this moment the ship gave a wild roll, and the next, when her starboard bulwarks were far down, an immense “green sea”—a solid wall of water—broke on board.
What followed baffles description. Those who had hold of the starboard brace escaped by clinging tightly to it and ducking beneath the bulwarks, where they were buried under several feet of water, but the others fared worse, being exposed to the full force of the sea. Whether Norris, Smith, and Harry grasped the life-lines or not, they never could clearly tell, but when the ship rolled to port, the great sea swept them before it like flies. All three, by a providential circumstance, were knocked down and jammed in between the iron stanchions and a spare spar lashed to the bulwarks,—all that saved them from going overboard.
But poor Gene! He was caught up like a bit of chaff, and whirled away over the submerged port bulwarks. Everyone near by, including the mate, had all he could do to save his own life, and none of them knew for a few moments what had happened. Captain Meade, from the quarter-deck, saw the awful accident, and his cry of “Man overboard!” and Gene’s despairing shriek mingled together. The captain was a cool man, and he desperately hurled a coil of rope in less time than it takes to tell it, but even had the lost man been able to grasp it, he could no more have held on at the rate the ship was going than he could have seized a flash of lightning. Before the words “Man overboard” were well out of the speaker’s mouth, the poor fellow was disappearing astern; his white face and yellow sou’-wester being plainly visible for several minutes.