An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

‘The vessel will be set on fire!’ cried Lady Monson.

‘Nothen to be afraid of, my lady,’ shouted Cutbill; ‘these fiery falls are common down here. I’ve been rolling up the maintop-garnsail in rain of this sort in the Bay of Bengal when ye’d ha’ thought that the ship had been put together out of lighted brimstone; every rope a streak of flame, and the ocean below as if old Davy Jones was entertaining his friends with a game of snapdragon.’

It was, no doubt, as Cutbill had said; but then there was not only the sight of the fire flashing out along the length of the vessel as far as the doorway permitted the eye to follow the deck, to the roaring, ebony, perpendicular discharge of the clouds; there was the tremendous thought of our being perched on the head of a newly-formed volcanic rock, that had leapt into existence on such another night as this. Suppose it sank under us! Here were all necessary conditions of atmosphere, at least, to justify dread of such a thing. Would the ship float? Was she buoyant enough to tear her keel from the rock and outlive the whirlpool or gulf which might follow the descent of a mountain of lava of whose dimensions it was impossible to form a conception? But she had six holes in her; and then, again, there was still plenty of water in the hold, whose volume must already have been further increased—rapidly and greatly increased—by the cataract that fell in a straight line to the broad yawn of the uprooted hatch.

My consternation was, indeed, so great that I could not speak. I felt Laura press my hand, as though the dew in the palm of it and the tremor of my fingers were hints sufficient to her of the sudden desperate fit of nervousness that possessed me; but I could not find my tongue. Figure being out in a horrible thunderstorm, miles from all shelter, and seized by an overmastering apprehension that the next or the next flash will strike you dead! My torment of mind was of this sort. I philosophised to myself in vain. There was nothing in the consideration that others shared my danger—most often a source of wonderful comfort to a person in peril—that I could but die once, that there were harder deaths than drowning, and the like, to restore me my self-possession. I was unnerved and in a panic of terror, fired afresh by the fearful fancy that had entered my brain on the preceding night of this head of rock gaping and letting us down to God knows what depth. All the time I was feeling with a hideous, nervous intensity with feet, fibres, and instincts for any faint premonitory jar or thrill in the hull to announce that this island was getting under way for the bottom again.

I believe that the electric rain had a deal to do with the insufferable distress of my mind at that time, for when it ceased—with the same startling suddenness that had marked the drop of the wind—I rallied as though to a huge bumper of brandy. My hands were wringing wet, yet cold as though lifted from a bucket of water; the perspiration poured down my face, but my nerves had returned to me.

‘What now is to be the next act of this wild play?’ said I.

‘A breeze of wind, your honour,’ cried Finn out of the black gap of the door; and sure enough I felt the grateful blowing of air cooled by the wet.

The weight of rain had wonderfully deadened the sea, and the surf that a little while ago broke with passion and fury now beat the rocks with a subdued and sulky roaring sound. It had clarified to the westwards somewhat, the dusk was of a thinner and finer sort there, with a look of wind in the texture of the darkness; but it continued a black night, with no other relief to the eye than the pale preternatural haze of light in the square of the main-hatch and the occasional vivid flash of phosphor out at sea. But the wind swept up rapidly, and within a quarter of an hour of the first of its breezing it was blowing hard upon a whole gale; the old galleon hummed to it as though she had all her rigging aloft. In an incredibly short time the sea was making clean breaches over the island, rendering the blackness hoary with a look of snow squalls as it slung its sheets of thrilling and throbbing and hissing spume high into the dark sweep of the gale. One saw the difference between this sort of weather and the night on which the ‘Bride’ had struck. Then the heaviest of the surf left a clear space of rock; but there were times now when the smother came boiling to the very bends of the galleon, striking her till you felt her tremble with huge quivering upheavals of froth over and into her; and it was like being at sea to look over the side and witness the white madness of water raging and beating on either hand. Every now and again a prodigious height of steam-like spray would go yelling up with the sound of a giantess’s scream into the flying darkness from some pipe-like conduit in the porous rock. These columns of water were so luminous with fire, so white with the crystalline smoke into which they were converted by the incalculable weight of the sea sweeping into the apertures, that, dark as it was, one saw them instantly and clearly. They soared with hurricane speed in a straight line, then were arched by the gale like a palm; and if ever the wind brought the falling torrent to our decks the stonified ship shook to the mighty discharge as though the point of land on which she lay were being rent by the force of flame and thunder which created it.

We sat in the cabin in total darkness. It made our condition unspeakably dreadful to be without light. We had tinder-boxes, but there was nothing to set fire to, nothing that would steadily flame and enable us to see; nor was there any prospect now of our being able to make a flare should we catch a glimpse of a ship, for what before would have made a fine bonfire was soaked through. It was up to a man’s knees on the main-deck, and the cabin would have been flooded but for the sharp spring or rise of the planks from the poop front to the stern. Such darkness as we sat in was like being blind. There was nothing to be seen through the door but pale clouds of spray flying through the air. Just the faintest outline of our figures upon the white ground of the sail was visible, but so dim, so indeterminable as to seem but a mere cheat of the fancy. A lamp or a candle would have rendered our condition less intolerable. The men could then have made shift to bring some sherry and provisions from the forecastle; the mere toying with food would have served to kill the time. We could have looked upon one another as we conversed, but the blackness of that interior was so profound that it weighed down upon us like the very spirit of dumbness itself. I have often since wondered whether men who are trapped in the bottom of a mine and lie waiting in the blackness there for deliverance—I have often wondered, I say, how long such poor fellows continue to talk to one another. The intervals of silence, I am sure, must rapidly grow greater and greater. There is something in intense darkness in a time of peril that seems to eat all the heart and courage out of a man. The voice appears to fall dead in the opacity as a stone vanishes when hurled at snow.

Cutbill and Finn did their best to keep up our hearts. They spoke of the certainty of this wind bringing a ship along with it. What should we have done without this galleon? they asked; but for the shelter it provided us with we should have been swept like smoke by the seas off the rocks. There was no fear, they said, of the old hooker not holding together. She was bound into one piece by the brine that had made a stone of her, and by the coating of shells, and if all ships afloat were as staunch as she was there would be an end of underwriting and drowned sailors would be few.