The Wreck of the Corsaire

by William Clark Russell

As I spoke the words, sweep! came the white smother off the sea over us with a spiteful yell of wind of a weight that smote the cheek a blow which might have forced the strongest to turn his back. The hissing, and seething, and crackling of the spume of the first of the squall was all about us in a breath, and in the beat of a heart to the Ruby, and the ocean all her way vanished in the wild and terrifying eclipse of the thick, silvery, howling, steam-like mist.

“By ——, I have done it now!” cried the mate.

The end of the painter had been dragged from his hand or he had let it fall! And the wind catching the boat blew her over the swell like the shadow of a cloud. The seamen threw their oars over and headed for us, their faces pale as those of madmen.

“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 till I was picked up. But all this business coming upon us so suddenly, along with the sudden blinding of me by the vapor, the distracting yelling of the wind and the sickening bewilderment caused by the wreck’s violent rolling, seemed to have driven all 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.

VII.

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 studdingsails, 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 vapor, 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 opened 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!