Will Weatherhelm: The Yarn of an Old Sailor

by William Henry Giles Kingston

My plan once formed, I lost no time in putting it into execution. That very evening I found a smack sailing for Portsmouth, and took my passage by her. On reaching Southsea, and telling my aunt all that had occurred, she very much approved of my plans, and encouraged me to set off at once for Shetland. She sent all sorts of messages to old friends, and to the children of old friends; for, as she remarked with a sigh, it was too probable that many of the parents would have been called away from the world.

Drawing a further supply of money from the bank, I went up to London by the coach next morning. I won’t stop to describe how I was bothered and confused in London, and how heartily I wished myself out of it. I found my way to London Bridge, and, after making many inquiries, I reached a place where there were several Leith smacks moored together. One was going to sail the next tide. I joyfully stepped aboard of her, and still more happy was I to find myself clear of the Thames and out at sea. We were just a week making the passage, which was very well, considering that we had a foul wind for some hours and had to bring up in Yarmouth Roads. From Leith I got on by another vessel to Aberdeen. In that port I found a regular trader which sailed once a month to Lerwick, in Shetland. She was a smack, but not equal in size to the craft in which I had come down from London to Leith.

We had been out about three days when very heavy thick weather came on, and a south-westerly gale sprung up, which came sweeping through the passage between Orkney and Shetland, kicking up a terrific sea. The smack behaved very well, but at last all that could be done was to set a try-sail and to heave her to, and away we drifted we knew not where. I had never before been in the North Seas, so I was not accustomed to such dark gloomy weather—not but what it is bad enough in the English Channel now and then—still it does not often last so long as it does up in the north.

Day after day the clouds hung down over our heads, and the wind howled, and the dark green seas kept leaping up around, as if eager to draw us down under their angry foaming bosoms. We had a hard matter to cook our provisions, and no very easy one to eat them raw or cooked. Suddenly the wind shifted and blew as strongly as ever from the eastward, and then from the northward, and then got back again into the old quarter, and the master confessed that, for the life of him he could not tell where he had drifted to.

“On which side of Shetland are we, do you think?” said I.

“I only hope that we are still to the eastward, but at all events I believe we are well away to the northward of the islands.”

“I hope so,” I answered. “But look, captain, what huge and unbroken seas come rolling in from the west; if we are not to the northward, it is my opinion that we have got the islands under our lee, and if this gale is to continue, I would rather have them anywhere else than there.”

“So would I, young man; but I have made this trip pretty often, and I don’t think that I can be so far out in my calculation,” was the answer.

All I could say was that I hoped that I was wrong and he was right, as, whichever was the case, there was nothing we could do till the weather moderated. On we drove. I did not like the look of things. When night came on I did not turn in, but sat down below out of the cold, ready to spring on deck in a moment. I had fastened my money in a belt round my waist, and kept my shoes ready to kick off, and my jacket loose to throw easily aside. I was certain that the vessel would be wrecked. I felt no fear for my own life, though I remembered my rash oath and what had occurred so often before, and the gloomy weather had indeed increased the conviction that I was under a sort of curse, and that I should have no rest till it was fulfilled. I am just saying what I then thought. I cannot even now be surprised at the idea gaining such powerful possession of my mind, while everything that had happened to me had tended to strengthen it.

Night came on. Pitchy darkness surrounded the storm-driven little smack. The cry of “Breakers! breakers!” and piercing shrieks made me spring on deck. At that moment the vessel struck. The foaming seas came hissing and roaring up after her. We were among a dark mass of rocks; no fabric formed by human hands could have withstood the violence of those terrific waves. I held on to the last moment, while the huge foaming seas washed over my head, almost drowning me, as I clung to the wreck. Then I felt the deck quiver and shake, and the stout beams and timbers were wrenched and torn asunder under my feet, and I was hurled onward among the broken fragments by a roaring sea, which must have well-nigh completed the destruction of the craft. I lost all consciousness.