John Holdsworth, Chief Mate

by William Clark Russell

The ocean was still a black and howling wilderness, and the vessel plunged and rolled, and trembled in the jumping seas, with her head right in the wind’s eye, and the water pouring over her in sheets of undulating fire. The water had stove in the cuddy front, and was washing in tons down into the steerage. What they had now to do was to furl the cross-jack; aft came the men and clewed the sail up; on which the vessel fell broadside to the wind and rolled her bulwarks under water.

To furl the cross-jack was a job full of peril; but, if the thing was to be done at all, it was to be done by a coup de main. Holdsworth, crying to the hands to follow him, sprang up the port mizzen rigging. Half-a-dozen went up after him, the rest skulked in the darkness, and stood holding their breath, expecting every moment the crash that should fling the men aloft into the sea. No glimpse of the brave fellows was to be obtained; nothing but the flapping outline of the white sail could be seen; the mast creaked harshly; but from time to time the men’s voices could be heard even above the roar of the tempest, the groaning of the ship, and the rolling of spare casks, a sheep-pen which had become unlashed, and other things about the waist and quarter-deck; and slowly the faint spaces of thundering canvas vanished in the darkness, and were securely stowed.

Meanwhile, the hands about the poop had been sent to man the pumps. The carpenter had sounded the well and reported three feet of water in the hold.

“She must be tight, sir! I am sure she is tight, sir! She has shipped the water that’s in her through the mast-coat of the main-mast!” the skipper shouted to Holdsworth, who stood, panting from his exertions aloft, close against the mizzen-mast, that he might judge what chance there was of its standing.

Meanwhile, the wheel was hard a-starboard, and the gale was now upon the ship’s quarter, the huge waves breaking under her counter and sending her wildly yawing forward. Had there been daylight, they could have rigged up a jury foresail on the stump of the fore-mast, which would have served to keep her before the wind; but nothing could be done in the overwhelming darkness except to keep the pumps at work.

But she was riding more easily now, and shipping fewer seas; the port bulwark just abaft the gangway had been crushed to a level with the deck by the fall of the main-mast, and offered a wide aperture for the escape of the water, so that the main-deck, where the hands worked the pumps, was practicable.

Furiously as it still blew, it was evident that the storm was abating; there were rifts in the clouds, through which, here and there, a pale star glimmered for an instant, and was then swallowed up.

It was now five bells (half-past ten); the skipper ordered rum to be served out to the men, who were wet through to the skin, and fagged to death by their extraordinary exertions. The carpenter sounded the well again, and reported an increase of three inches in the depth of water. This was a terrible announcement, and proved beyond a doubt that the ship was leaking, though the crew were kept in ignorance of the report, that they might not be disheartened.

At six bells the clouds had broken into huge black groups, with spaces of clear sky between, and the wind was lulling as rapidly as it had risen.

The ship was still buoyant enough to rise easily over the seas; but anything more forlorn than her appearance, as it was disclosed by the dim light that fell from the rifts among the clouds, cannot be imagined.