"I saw it coming!" roared the bo'sun in my ear. "I had just time to sing out to Cornish to slacken the lee-braces, and to put the helm hard over."
"We shall never be able to run!" I bellowed back. "She'll be pooped as sure as a gun when the sea comes! We must heave her to whilst we can. No use thinking of the fore-topsail—it must go!"
"Look there!" shouted Cornish, dropping the spokes with one hand to point.
There was something indeed to look at; one of the finest steamers I had ever seen, brig-rigged, hove to under a main-staysail. She seemed, so rapidly were we reeling through the water, to rise out of the sea.
She lay with her bowsprit pointing across our path, just on our starboard bow. Lying as she was, without way on her, we should have run into her had the weather been thick, as surely as I live to say so.
We slightly starboarded the helm, clearing her by the time we were abreast by not more than a quarter of a mile. But we dared not have hauled the ship round another point; for, with our braces all loose, the first spilling of the sails would have brought the yards aback, in which case indeed we might have called upon God to have mercy on our souls, for the ship would not have lived five minutes.
There was something fascinating in the spectacle of that beautiful steamship, rolling securely in the heavy sea, revealing as she went over to starboard her noble graceful hull, to within a few feet of her keel. But there was also something unspeakably dreadful to us to see help so close at hand, and yet of no more use than had it offered a thousand miles away.
There was a man on her bridge, and others doubtless watched our vessel unseen by us; and God knows what sensations must have been excited in them by the sight of our torn and whirling ship blindly rushing before the tempest, her sails in rags, the half-hoisted ensign bitterly illustrating our miserable condition, and appealing, with a power and pathos no human cry could express, for help which could not be given.
"Let us try and heave her to now!" I shrieked, maddened by the sight of this ship whirling fast away on our quarter. "We can lie by her until the gale has done and then she will help us!"
But the boatswain could not control the wheel alone: the blows of the sea against the rudder made it hard for even four pairs of hands to hold the wheel steady. I rushed to the companion and bawled for the steward, and when, after a long pause, he emerged, no sooner did the wind hit him than he rolled down the ladder.