Here he took a drink.
“And the weather as thick as mud, you say?”
“Ay, thick as mud in a wine-glass. The Sou’ San’head light was on our starboard beam, and ye may guess how clear it was when I tell you that that light took a deal of peering at to make out. As to the East Good’in, why, all that way was black as my boot: not the merest glimmer to betoken a lightwessel there. I was at the side, heavin’ the lead, getting nine fathom, and then seven, and then eight, and then seven again. Eight fair betwixt the Callipers and the Deal coast I’ll allow ye’ll get eleven and twelve fathom good till you come on to past the Downs—headin’ up, I mean—and then it shoals down to height and seven and five and a ’arf. So in a night as black as a dead wall, when there’s no moon, who’s to know, when the last light seen has drawed out of view, and there’s ne’er another to be sighted, where you are in that water? We was going along tidy fast, when a squall of rain drives right up over our starn in a wild smother, and I had just made seven fathom by the lead when the wessel took the ground, chucking me off the rail on to the deck. The skipper begins to bawl out like mad, ‘Let go the main-torps’l halliards! Haul up the foresail! Let go the ——’ Wash at that moment comes a lump of sea right over the port quarter, cantin’ our starn to the south’ard and smotherin’ the decks. You didn’t want to see—you could feel that the brig was hard and fast, though as the sea thumped her she’d kinder sway on her keel.”
Here he took another drink.
“Well?” said I.
“Well,” he continued, “what was to do now, master? Everything being let go aloft, the canvas was slatting like thunder up there, and though I’m not goin’ to tell you it was blowing a gale of wind, yet it seemed to come twice as hard the moment we took the ground, and the seas to rise as if our falling helpless on a sudden had swelled ’em up with joy. We lay with our head about nor’-nor’-east, and over the starboard bow you could see the white water jumping. But that was all that was visible. The wind seemed to blow up the thickness all round us, there was not a light to be seen, and looking around anywhere away from the white water was like putting your head in a pitch-kettle. Cold! master, that was the worst part of it. I’ll allow that in all sitivations of this kind the cold’s the part that’s hardest to bear. Somehow clanger ain’t so frightful when it’s warm. Can’t explain it, I’m sure; matter o’ constitootion, perhaps: but I doubt if ye’d find much bravery among the Hesquimos and the Roosians up near the pole, and the likes o’ them. Can’t see how it’s possible; but it’s only my ’pinion.”
Another drink.
“Well,” he continued, holding up the fresh glass of ale I had ordered for him to the light, with a look of pensiveness in the one bloodshot eye he kept open, “we tarns to and makes a flare—a sort o’ bonfire. But if we couldn’t see anything, who was to see us? However, we kept all on burning flares, whilst first the fore-top-gall’nmast came down with a run, causing us all to jump aft out of the road, and then the main-topmast carries away at the cap and falls with a roar over the side, and set us all running forrard. I for one made up my mind we was all to be drownded. I couldn’t see no help for it. The noise of them spars cracking and tumbling away in the blackness overhead, and the shindy set up by the slatting canvas, along with the creaking of the hull and the washing of the water that came as white as milk over the starboard rail, was enough, I reckon, to make any man suppose his time had come, and that his ghost was to be turned out of him. However, we took heart after a spell, by noticing that the seas burst with less weight as the tide left us, though every butt in her must have yawed open after she had been grinding awhile, for she was full of water and a few hours more of such dusting was bound to have made staves of her. Well, at about half-past four o’clock in the morning, we being by that time pretty near froze to death, the weather thinned down, and we caught sight of the Gull Light shining—about three mile off, I dare say. What was to be seen of our wessel was just a fearful muddle; masts overboard washing alongside, the lower masts working in her like loose teeth with every heave, decks full of raffle, and the water every now and again flying over us as though detarmined if it couldn’t wash us overboard it would keep us streamin’ wet. When we spied the Gull Light we turned to and made another flare, and presently they sent up a rocket, and to cut this yarn short,” continued he, having by this time emptied his second tumbler, and finding me slow in offering him a third, “just as the light was abreakin’ in the east one of us sings out that there was a steamer headin’ for us, and when the mornin’ grew stronger we spied a tug makin’ for us with a lifeboat in tow. Well, by this time there was little enough sea, and the lifeboat, letting go off the tug, came alongside, but two of our men was so badly froze up that they had to be lifted into her, and such had been our sufferings, though I’m not going to say they equalled what others have gone through on those cussed sands, that we couldn’t have looked worse, with salt in our eyes and our faces washed into the appearance of tallow, had we been spendin’ forty-eight hours on that shoal. We lost all our clothes, every bloomin’ thing we had with us; and that same forenoon, just afore twelve o’clock, half a gale of wind sprung up, and by two o’clock there was nothing to be seen of the brig.”
“And that’s the story,” said I.