Master Rockafellar's Voyage

by William Clark Russell

There was nothing to be seen over the side, and there was no more water in the bottom of the ship than was always to be found there. The sea was sounded all around with the hand-lead, but, as will readily be supposed, no bottom was got.

In the midst of this commotion the heavens seemed to be split open by a flash of lightning; the whole surface of the ocean shone out to its farthest confines to the crimson blaze, and then came, within three seconds of the terrific glare, a crash of thunder right overhead. The enormous explosion liberated the rain; down it came, a very Niagara Falls of water! In a trice it was up to a man’s knees in the main-deck, and every mother’s son of us was as a drowned rat, soaked through and through; the passengers rushing headlong to the hatches, and the sailors floundering about here and there to the hurried cries of the mate ordering sail to be shortened.

There was no more lightning, but the rain continued to fall in a living sheet of water, which flashed the fire up out of the sea all about us. Indeed, the black atmosphere was extraordinarily full of electricity, and even through the blinding veil of the rain you could catch a sight of bluish sparks glittering about the ironwork, with the coming and going of nebulous lights upon the yard-arms and bowsprit. The ship was snugged down, but the furling of the wet and beating canvas was hard work. You could not see an inch before your face. I had to grope my way on to the mizzen topsail yard as a man might through a small tunnel in the bottom of a pyramid. The foot-ropes were as slippery as ice, and as my legs were very short my situation was one of real danger, not more due to the sickening rolling and strong beating of the heavy saturated canvas than to the circumstance of Poole being alongside of me—by which I mean that his long legs, like a pair of compasses, weighed down the foot-rope upon which we were standing into an angle down which I would slide, until my feet were off the line, and there was nothing to save me from going overboard but my grip of the jack-stay.

All the while that we were working we expected the mass of impenetrable shadow that hung over our heads, dark as the midnight inkiness of a vault, to burst into a roaring gale of wind; yet all remained quiet; the rain ceased; saving the straining noises of the rolling ship there was nothing to be heard but the sobbing of water cascading off the decks overboard through the scupper holes. No more shocks were felt, though I fancy the nerves of us all continued on the strain in expectation of such another thump as that which had sent the people below running up in terror through the hatches.

At midnight it was still a thick black calm, and the same high swell working that had been running throughout the watch. I was not a little rejoiced to hear the chimes of the bell, for I had been soaked by the downfall to the very marrow, yet durst not leave the deck for a minute to change my wet clothes for dry ones. We turned in dog-tired, and slept without a stir throughout the four hours; and when we were called again at four o’clock the stars were shining, the moon was setting in the west, a fresh breeze was blowing over our starboard quarter, and the Lady Violet was once more driving through it on her way home under canvas that clothed her from truck to waterway.

What it was that we had struck or that had struck us could only be a matter of conjecture. The captain was of opinion that the shock had been caused by a submarine earthquake—a volcanic explosion deep down. “It was the right sort of night,” he argued, “for disturbances of that kind; the water full of fire, and the atmosphere tingling with electricity.” On the other hand, Mr. Johnson had no doubt that the ship had received a blow from the rising of a whale under her keel. The creature had risen to spout, but had been frightened by the thump it had given itself and made off.

It was a thing, as I had said, that one could only speculate upon. The ship was divided into two parties, one accepting the captain’s and the other the mate’s opinion. Which side I declared for I do not remember; but on recurring to the incident at this distance of time, I have no doubt whatever that the mate was in the right, for since those days I have been on board a ship where an earthquake has happened in the deep sea beneath her, and the sort of vibratory scraping sensation that accompanied the shock was entirely different from the dull lumpish thud that had made every heart in the Lady Violet beat fast on that black night.

As we approached the entrance to the English Channel ships grew numerous, and every hour yielded us a fresh canvas of ocean panorama. At daybreak one morning we spied a large ship right ahead, and by four o’clock in the afternoon had approached her close enough to read the name upon her stern; and great was our triumph when we discovered that she was the fine clipper ship Owen Glendower, that had left Sydney eight days before us. We passed her in the night, and the watch on deck let fly an ironical cheer at her, taking their chance of being heard, and at sunrise next morning nothing but her royal and topgallant sails were visible on the shining line of the horizon.