Master Rockafellar's Voyage

by William Clark Russell

“They’ll never stem this weather,” cried the mate; “follow me, Mr. Catesby, or we are dead men.”

He tore off his coat, kicked off his boots and went overboard without another word.

Follow him! To the bottom, indeed! but nowhere else, for I could not swim a stroke. But that was not quite it. Had I had my senses I might have grasped the first piece of wreckage I could put my hand upon and gone after him with it to paddle and hold on to till I was picked up. But all this business coming upon us so suddenly, along with the sudden blinding of me by the vapour, the distracting yelling of the wind and the sickening bewilderment caused by the wreck’s violent rolling, seemed to have driven my wits clean out of my head. The boat was scarcely more than a smudge in the thickness, vanishing and showing as she swept up and rushed down the liquid acclivities, held with her bow towards the hulk by the desperately-plied oars of the rowers. The mate was borne down rapidly towards her. I could just see three of the sailors leaning over the side to drag him out of the water; the next instant the little fabric had vanished in the thickness, helplessly and with horrible rapidity blown out of sight the moment the men ceased rowing to rescue their officer.

I do not know how long all this may have occupied; a few minutes maybe sufficed for the whole of the tragic passage. I stood staring and staring, incredulous of the truth of what had befallen me, and then with an inexpressible sickness of heart I flung myself down upon the deck under the lee of a little space of bulwark, too dizzy and weak with the horror that possessed me to maintain my footing on that wildly swaying platform.

I had met in my travels with but one specimen of such weather as this; it was off the Cape of Good Hope to the westward; the ship was under topmast and topgallant studding sails, when, without an interval of so much as twenty seconds of calm, she was taken right aback by a wind that came with the temper of half a gale in it, whilst as if by magic a fog, white and dense as wool, was boiling and shrieking all about her.

For some time my consternation was so heavy that I sat mechanically staring into that part of the thickness where the boat had disappeared, without giving the least heed to the sea or to the wreck. It was then blowing in earnest, the ocean still densely shrouded with flying vapour, and an ugly bit of a sea racing over the swell that rolled its volumes to windward. A smart shock and fall of water on to the forecastle startled me into sudden perception of a real and imminent danger. The fore-scuttle was closed, but the main and companion hatchways yawned open to the weather; there were no bulwarks worth talking of to increase the wreck’s height of side, and to hinder the free tumbling of the surge on to the decks, so if the wind increased and the sea grew heavier, the hulk must inevitably fill and go down like a thunderbolt!

It would be idle to try to express the thoughts which filled me. I was like one stunned: now casting an eye at the sea to observe if the billows were increasing, now with a heart of lead watching the water frothing upon the deck, as the hull heaved from one side to the other; then straining my sight with a mad passion of eagerness into the vapour that shut off all view of the ocean to within a cable’s length of me. There was nothing to be done. Even could I have met with tarpaulins, there was no sailor’s skill in me to spread and secure them over the open hatches. However, when an hour had passed in this way, I took notice of a small failure of the wind, though there was no lightening of the impenetrable mist. The folds of the swell had diminished, and the sea was running steadily; the hull with her broadside dead in the trough, rose and fell with regularity, and though at long intervals the surge struck her bow, and blew in crystals over the head, or tumbled in scores of bucketfuls upon the deck, nothing more than spray wetted the after-part of her.

It was now six o’clock in the evening. In two hours’ time the night would have come down, and if the weather did not clear, the blackness would be that of the tomb. What would the Ruby do? Remain hove-to and wait for moonlight or for daybreak to seek for me? A fragment of comfort I found in remembering that the wreck’s position would be known to Captain Bow and his mates, so that their search for me, if they searched at all, ought not to prove fruitless; though to be sure much would depend upon the drift of the hulk. Presently, fearing that there might be no water or provisions on board, I was seized with a sudden thirst, bred by the mere apprehension that I might come to want a drink. There was still light enough to enable me to search the interior, and now I suppose something of my manhood must have returned to me, for I made up my mind to waste no moment of the precious remaining time of day in imaginations of horror and of death and in dreams of desperate despondency. I went on my hands and knees to the hatch, lest if I stood up I should be knocked down by the abrupt rolling of the craft, and entered the cabin. On deck all was naked and sea-swept from the taffrail to the “eyes,” and if there were aught of drink or of food to be had it must be sought below. I recollected that one of the forward berths or cabins, which the second mate and I had looked into, had shown in the gloom as a sort of pantry; that is to say, in peering over my companion’s shoulders, I had caught a glimpse of crockery on shelves, the outlines of jars and so forth. But the inspection had been very swift, scarce more than a glance. I made for this cabin now, very well remembering that it was the last of a row of three or four on the starboard side. I opened the door, and secured it by its hook to the bulkhead that I might see, and after rummaging a little I found a cask of ship’s bread, a small cask (like a harness cask) a quarter full of raw pickled pork, a jar of vinegar, two large jars of red wine, and best of all, a small barrel about half full of fresh water, slung against the bulkhead, with a little wooden tap fixed in it, for the convenience as I supposed of drawing for cabin use. There were other articles of food, such as flour, pickles, dried fruit, and so on; the catalogue would be tedious, nor does my memory carry it.