The Mate of the Good Ship York; Or, The Ship's Adventure

by William Clark Russell

"A bell will strike of itself in a rolling ship. I have heard it. Or it was hit by a rope. Do you believe in ghosts, Julia?"

"I don't want to."

"The stroke was a sudden come-to in the reel of the brig, or a rope did it," said Hardy, and she tried to look as though she believed him.

Thus they talked whilst they sat in the deck-house, for out of it they would have stood to be washed overboard. The seas poured in gray-green folds, and the foam rolled about the decks like the cream of the breaker on shelving sand. She was a stout bucket and strongly knit, and if all had been well with her she would have sported with this breeze. Her canvas was setting her to the eastwards broadside on, and Hardy was glad of it, because he guessed that the York would remain hove to, and that her drift would not be much greater than the sag of this half-drowned Geordie.

But though he looked abroad he never witnessed any signs of improvement, or even promise of improvement, in the weather. It was not blowing harder, however, which was a good thing, yet he guessed that even if the weight of the wind remained as it stood, then, should it blow all night, a fair daybreak would not reveal the York, in which case they were shipwrecked, and must either wait to be taken off, or trust to God's mercy to keep the boat in her place forward, that they might launch her, and seek the succour that would not come. The deck-house was often hit by the sea, but the blows were rarely hard, and there was more terror in the thunder of the stroke than in the possibility of the structure going.

"I see a scuttle-butt out there," said he once during the course of the morning.

"What's that?" she asked.

"A cask for holding fresh water for the men to drink when on deck."

He stepped out, got under the rail, and crept to the scuttle-butt with the foam about his feet. The dipper hung by a sling; he dropped it through the hole and brought it up full, and tasting it found it fairly sweet, sweet enough for human necessity. He added security to the cask by further lashings, and covered the hole to protect the water from the flying salt, then crept back through the foam to the side of his sweetheart, first sending the sight of a falcon piercing the rain-swept obscurity of the quarter in which he guessed the York was lying hove to. But all was the confusion of the headlong surge, raging in frequent collision, the stormy stare of motionless vapour, the wink of the sea-flash within the veil of haze, and the universal groaning of old ocean when that grim Boatswain, the Gale, whitens her back with the thongs of his cat.

About midday they made another meal off pork sandwiches, a godsend to the poor creatures. As the time went by and the weather held as before, the sense of shipwreck grew keener and keener in Hardy. Not so with the girl; compared to what might have been, this wallowing lump of brig, filled with timber, straining afloat, was paradise. But Hardy did not much relish the notion of having to take to that boat yonder. He could see that with the yard-arm tackle which he would find she was to be easily got on to her keel, and hoisted out of it by the little winch just before the mainmast.