A HURRICANE
Our voyage, after this incident of the roller down to below the
latitude of Cape Horn, was uneventful. I had looked with dread to
the cold of that stormy and desolate part of the world; but when we
arrived, having struck a parallel, indeed, beyond which the captain
informed us we were not to push much further, I found the ocean climate
by no mean insupportable.
My wardrobe had been a liberal equipment. I had furs, wraps and the
like in plenty, and all very warm; then again my health had wonderfully
improved, and this helped me to find the cold a lesser evil than I
had feared. Throughout the days a fire glowed in the cabin. And yet
it was towards the close of June when we were nearly as far south as
the captain intended to go, and June is mid-winter in that part of the
world, with but four or five hours of light only in the day, and the
sun a little scarlet ball whose arc of flight might scarcely frame an
iceberg.
All this while the captain remained the changed man I have before
attempted to express him. I did not observe that his despondency
increased upon him. He was as one who lives with some fixed belief in
his head, who, depressing his bearing and manner to a level, leaves
himself there, never sinking, but never rising either. For the rest
it had been as it still was, a monotonous routine of bells and meals,
reading, chatting, playing at games in the cabin; sometimes we had
spoken a ship; once we had floated quietly into a school of whales
which made the cold black deep lying under the large stars of the
south as beautiful as any dream of poet with the silver willowy curves
of light they blew to the moon.
In this time I found no opportunity to send a second letter home.
I cannot remember our latitude on this day I am to write about. I
understood that, for reasons my memory will not suffer me to explain,
we had made more southing than was necessary, whilst we were further
to the east--half-way indeed, to Georgia Island,--than the captain
and mate cared to talk about. The weather had been sulky all the
morning; large snow clouds in soft dyes of darkness upon the stooping,
corrugated, leaden sky, floated sullenly athwart our mast-heads, but
without any squally outfly of wind so far, though often the snow fell
thickly. A large westerly swell was running, and the ship bowed heavily
upon it, finding nothing to steady her in the small beam breeze that
blew bitter as ice straight out of the south.
I remained in the cabin all the morning, reading beside the fire.
Whilst we were at dinner, the mate, shaggy in thick pilot cloth and a
great fur cap between whose ear-covers his face lay small as though
withered by the cold into a mere leer of eye and a purple nose jewelled
with a little icicle, came half-way down the companion ladder.
'There's a big island jumped out of a snowfall on the lee bow,' he
exclaimed. 'The lady'll like to see it p'raps,' having said which he
instantly returned on deck.
Strangely enough, though we had measured many leagues of ocean often
for months and months studded with bergs, we had down to this hour
sighted nothing of the sort. I had longed to see an iceberg before all
other sights of the deep, and at once wrapped myself up, and went on
deck with the captain. On stepping to the lee side, there on the bow
about two miles off we beheld a vast iceberg like a mighty cathedral
in alabaster shaping itself out of a soft vapoury shadow! As each
feature of the mass stole out it showed with an ivory-like clearness
against the hoary soot of the snow-cloud past it; the swell of the
sea washed the base in a large surf. The water was lead coloured as
the sky; its heavings were slow and stubborn, and each volume rolled
along as though it were of oil or quicksilver. Some lovely snow-white
petrels darted swallow-like athwart our sluggish wake. I cannot express
how their beauty deepened, to the imagination, the sky-wide loneliness
of this scene of ocean with its ice-island there, material as rock,
dissoluble as the smallest of the flakes falling upon it--a mere dream
of substance--a pageant of the deep as illusive as the tapestries of
the clouds.
Many shadows of snow hung round the sea. It was like entering a vast
arena funereal with draperies.
'What does that iceberg remind you of?' said Mr. Owen, approaching us
with Mrs. Burke.
'Of a cathedral,' said I.
'Exactly,' he exclaimed. 'Winchester and Canterbury combined, with
a hint from Strasburg in that corner to the right yonder, where its
opening is clear of the snow.'
'A pretty little fairy toy to thump up against on a black howling
night,' said Captain Burke, with an uneasy look round at the weather.
'This is as strange a day as ever I saw,' said Mrs. Burke.
'How long could people live on such an iceberg as that?' said I.
'Give 'em wreckage for huts and food and fuel, and they should live
long enough to be taken off,' answered the captain.
'Ha!' exclaimed Mr. Owen, pensively regarding the majestic bulk, 'fancy
finding one's self alone on such an island as that! An ice Crusoe!'
'I've known three whalers taken off a piece of ice four or five days
before the lump they floated on would have melted under their feet,'
said the captain.
Mr. Owen viewed him with a smile. The captain abruptly left us, and
standing at the wheel directed his eyes earnestly round the sea and up
at the sky. Mrs. Burke said:
'My husband's uneasy. I hope we are not going to have any very bad
weather.'
'Miss Otway,' said Mr. Owen, 'do you know, those birds are the souls
of dead ballet-girls? Observe the exquisite time and grace of their
measures and curvings, as though they held their white skirts out and
revolved to unheard music.'
Here Captain Burke called out sharply:
'Get the main-topgallant sail furled and all three topsails
single-reefed.'
In a few minutes the ship was clamorous with singing men and busy with
running figures; a pale ray of sunshine glanced just then at no great
height above the horizon and flashed up our ice-glazed rigging and
flamed in the spears of ice at the catheads: it touched the iceberg
and the cathedral-like phantasy that was now abeam whitened out into a
glaring brilliance which flung a sheen of its own round about it; the
sky hung pale above and on its left, but to the right of it snow was
falling thickly. In a few minutes the whole mass vanished, a deeper
gloom closed in upon the sea, and the swell ran with an increased
weight.
It was an 'all hands' job as sailors call it, and while the watches
were on the topsail yards, the captain bawled out 'two reefs,' and when
some hands went on to the mizzen topsail yard he cried out to them to
close-reef the sail, which, before the men came down, was clewed up and
furled. Even whilst I remained on deck a sort of vapourish thickness
had gathered round the horizon, as though the several draperies of
snow-cloud had compacted into a huge circular wall, blotting out
everything a mile off, whilst overhead the sooty stuff, like scud held
in suspense, floated low down till the sweep of the dog vane at the
royal mast-head seemed to rend it.
It began to snow in large soft flakes. I went down the companion steps,
and Mrs. Burke and Mr. Owen followed me. I heard Mr. Owen say softly,
as though he would not have me overhear,
'I wish the mercury had not sunk so low.'
'I shall be glad to get out of this sea into the north, where the sun
is,' answered Mrs. Burke.
It was after two, and the cabin lamp was alight. I removed my wraps and
took a chair close by the stove. The motion of the ship was large, and
sweeping upon the swell. You could judge of its character by watching
the oscillation of the lamp. Presently Mrs. Burke came from her cabin
and sat beside me.
'We are going to have heavy weather, I fear,' said I.
'Oh, well, this is a brave little ship,' she answered. 'We are a long
way from home down here, but she's carried us safely so far.'
'She has truly, nurse. I cannot wonder that sailors should feel towards
ships they have long lived in almost as towards the women they love.
A ship is alive. I can think of her as with passions and feelings.
I've seen the "Lady Emma" erect her spars and look at a sea as a horse
cocks its ears at a gate--I once heard Mr. Green talking to her, and I
laughed to find myself thinking she understood him.'
'What did he say?'
'"Go it, old bucket"--I forget what more,' said I.
'If it were not for Mr. Moore,' said she, looking at me with
affectionate eyes, 'I would stake all that my husband owns in this ship
that you ended in marrying a sailor.'
I quietly shook my head.
'Well, the sea has used you handsomely, anyway,' said she. 'I dare say
Sir Mortimer is at this minute wondering where you are. How he and Mr.
Moore will have pored over the map of the world, to be sure. But little
can they guess where you are this very day. This is the terrible Horn
your father was so afraid of for your sake. It's not so cold, is it?
And yet we are further south than it is customary for ships to venture.
What would Sir Mortimer think of such a sight as you saw to-day--that
great iceberg, I mean? Fancy such an object floating just opposite your
house. What a fortune for the boatmen!'
Just then I heard a shouting on deck; it came dulled through the
planks, yet I caught a sharp, fierce note of instant need in it. A
minute later the ship leaned down to an outfly of wind that seemed of
hurricane force. I heard the thunder of the storm, and saw the lee
cabin windows drowned in the green brine, whilst the weather ports
winked like blinded eyes with the sudden lashing of foam. My chair gave
way, and with a shock I fell with it and rolled down the deck, and for
some moments lay helpless, astonished, terrified to the last degree,
but unhurt.
Mrs. Burke clung to a stanchion, and I feared, whilst I watched her
stout form swinging off it, to see her let go, lest she should flash
down upon me and break my neck or maim me for life with her weight. I
could not imagine what was happening save that a sudden hurricane had
struck the ship and thrown her on her beam ends. She lay as though
capsized, with a horrible roaring, pounding thunderous noise of water
on the weather side of her, and frightful sounds in her hold, threaded
with dim notes of rending, as though sails were flogging in rags, or
masts going over the sides.
I managed to get on my knees, and in that posture remained a minute
like one on the roof of a house. Such was the slant of the deck
I could no more have crawled up it to where Mrs. Burke hung by a
stanchion than up a wall. This awful sensation of the ship being upset
was dreadfully increased and made a sickness of for the very soul
itself to faint under, by her motions in the vast hollow swell which
the hurricane was tearing into shreds. Whenever a pause of the beating
sea left a weather cabin window weeping, yet clear to that extent, I
could judge it was about black as midnight outside. The globe of the
lamp had swung hard against the deck, and rarely came from it even
with a windward roll. All in a moment the ship lurched over yet, till
you would have thought she was turning keel up, and this motion was
accompanied by such a thump of the sea, such a shattering inleaping
of tons of water, it was as though a huge gun or a whole broadside of
pieces had been fired on board of us.
And again through the roaring blow of water I caught the muffled noise
of the rending of wood. I shrieked out in that moment of agonising
suspense, 'We are sinking!' and indeed so blinding was the eclipse of
the window glass that I did truly believe we were going down and were
even then below the surface.
Mrs. Burke was unable to make any reply. She was almost black in the
face with the anguish of supporting her weight and with horror and
fear. In a few moments the strength of her arms gave out; but by
relaxing her grip she doubtless saved her neck; her grasp loosened and
she slided her embrace down the stanchion to the deck, and then let
go and swept silent and helpless as a length of timber down to close
beside me; her feet struck the cabin wall hard, and she lay a minute
without motion as though the breath had been shocked out of her. She
then grasped my hand and cried out:
'Oh, what can have happened? Are we amongst the ice? Did you hear a
noise as if our masts had been splintered?'
I shrieked back--I put it thus strongly, for you cannot imagine the
uproar in that cabin, what with the grinding of the ship and the
freight, the creaking of a hundred strong fastenings, the cannonading
of flying tons of brine against the lifted exposed weather side of the
vessel--I say I shrieked back:
'Let us try to get on deck. It is horrible to drown down here.'
'Don't talk like that. What can have happened? Is Edward safe? What has
become of the ship? Oh, the suddenness of it! Are we amongst the ice?'
Thus the poor woman raved. She was silenced by a roar of water like
a crash of thunder close overhead; a sea of giant bulk had swept the
quarter-deck, and in a breath a cataract, sparkling in the lamp light,
rushed smoking down the companion, and before we could deliver a
scream we were up to our waists.
The water must have been of an icy coldness, but I felt it not--at
least in that way; it was no colder than the summer ripples which I
would paddle in when a child. Terror had rendered me insensible to pain.
'Cannot we drag ourselves out of it before more comes, or we shall be
drowned?' screamed poor Mrs. Burke.
Then it was that the ship began to right. She righted slowly at first,
then came to a level keel with a sickening jerk and a wild leap of her
whole frame that sent the water in the cabin speeding and roaring white
as milk.
A door opened and Mr. Owen stumbled out.
'Oh, my God!' he cried. 'What has happened? I have been unable to
release myself. My berth is half-full of water.'
And then he came splashing over to where Mrs. Burke and I stood with
an arm writhed about the stanchion. But oh, the soul-lifting sense of
relief that came into one with the feel of that level deck and the rise
and fall, hard and furious as the tossing was!
'What has happened?' cried Mr. Owen.
'Hark!' was Mrs. Burke's answer, in so shrill a note, that it
pierced the ear like a whistle. We heard the voices of men on deck.
A few moments later the figure of Captain Burke appeared in the
companion-way. He looked down and cried out:
'Are you all right below there?'
'Edward, come to us. What has happened?' shrieked Mrs. Burke.
'How much water have you taken in down here?' he cried, and descended
to the bottom of the steps, where he stood looking round him like a man
bereft of his mind.
'What is it, Edward?' screamed his wife. 'Tell us. We are half dead
with fright and nearly drowned.'
'The ship's a sheer hulk--totally dismasted,' he cried, in a raving
way, still looking round and around and around.
'Oh, oh,' wailed the poor woman, and the doctor, grey as ashes,
floundered through the rushing flood upon the cabin floor towards the
captain.
'Not yet, sir, not yet, sir,' roared Captain Burke, holding him off
with both hands out. 'See to the ladies. Let them shift their clothes.
This water will drain off quickly. Give them brandy and take some.
Mary,' he shouted, 'the ship's alive, but if she's to remain so I
must see to her,' saying which he went up the steps, closing the
companion-way behind him.
Mr. Owen splashed and staggered after him. He ran up the companion
steps bawling, 'Don't lock us up down here,' and tried the doors, but
was unable to open them.
'Why has he shut us up?' I cried wildly, for this imprisonment was the
most dreadful passage of all; I felt as if I should suffocate.
'He's afraid of more water pouring down and considers we're safer here
than on deck. He'll not leave us to drown. He'll not forget we're
here,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke.
'He may be swept overboard, and the others will forget us.'
'Come to your cabin and change your boots and dress. No more water is
coming in, you see. What is that noise? Hark! Oh, it is the clanging
of the pumps. How fearfully sudden! But it is always so at sea. Oh,
my poor husband! Come, Miss Marie, come and change, or this will be
giving you your death,' and grasping me by the arm the dear, poor, good
creature led me towards my cabin.
As we stepped, moving very slowly with frequent abrupt halts and mutual
clingings, for the jump of the dismantled hull from hollow to peak, her
helpless beamwise lurch from summit to valley, were a brain-sickness
in sensation, Mr. Owen came out of the pantry holding a bottle of
brandy and a glass. He bid me take a small glassful. I told him no, and
Mrs. Burke said it was no time to think of drinking. It might be that
we should be called upon very soon to save our lives, and every one
would want the best of his wits.
'The captain recommended a draught of the spirit, and so do I,' said
Mr. Owen, reeling in the doorway with the motion of the ship and
submitting a figure which I must have laughed at, at a time less
appalling, with his short legs set apart, their shape defined by the
soaked small clothes which hung like loose plaster upon them, his bushy
mass of minute curls over either ear seeming to enlarge like the puff
from the mouth of a cannon even as the eye rested upon them, a bottle
in one hand, a wineglass in the other, and his face as pale as tallow.
Mrs. Burke made no answer, and we gained our cabin.
The stout door and high coaming had kept the interior fairly dry. I
changed, but though I immediately felt the comfort of the dry thick
clothing I cannot recollect that I shivered, that I even felt cold, so
completely was all physical sensibility in this dreadful time dominated
by my horror and surprise and my fright lest the ship should go down
with us whilst we were locked up below. Mrs. Burke left me, to shift
some of her own clothes.
I stood at the cabin porthole, holding on by a stanchion that served
as a bed-post, and looked out. The thick glass was so blind with the
ceaseless wash of the roaring sea-flashes that I could distinguish
nothing save dissolving, shifting, shapeless bulks of dim white, vague
as snow-clad mountains beheld in starless gloom. But their thunder was
without, close beside; and their strength was in the hurl of the ship.
Indeed a vast dangerous sea had been set running almost as swiftly as
the hurricane had burst upon us, and running athwart was the huge swell
filled with the might of the greatest stretch of ocean in the world.
In about half an hour Mrs. Burke came to me. The cabin lamp continued
to burn brightly, but the fire in the stove had been extinguished by
the water. She made me put on a pair of india-rubber shoes, for though
the brine had drained off the cabin floor, the thick carpet squelched
under the tread like wet sand which leaves a pool in your foot-print.
The keen edge of this swamp of brine was in the atmosphere, raw and
weedy and death cold; it was like entering a ship's hold under sea.
Mrs. Burke got me to the table, and procured some stout and cold
chicken, and compelled me to eat, herself setting an example. She
struggled with her spirits, and sought to talk a little cheerfully.
'We are still alive, you see,' she said. 'The "Lady Emma" is one of the
strongest ships ever built. I am no longer frightened. I can feel the
life in a ship as a sailor does, and this vessel is jumping so briskly
that I am certain she is not taking in any water. My husband, besides,
is a thorough seaman. He knows exactly what to do, and what is best
will be done.' Then turning her head, she exclaimed, 'Where is Mr.
Owen?'
She got up and opened the pantry door; afterwards knocked upon the door
of his berth. The noises were so many and distracting I could not hear
if he answered. She opened the door and exclaimed:
'Won't you come and eat a little supper with us?'
'No, thank 'ee,' he answered, in a thickish voice.
Mrs. Burke stared at him awhile, then closed the door and returned to
me.
The motions of the ship were so violent that we found it hard to keep
our seats.
The food was flung over the fiddles into our laps. Every recovery had
the abruptness of the flight of a missile; the water roared about the
cabin windows, and again and again as the hull sank or soared, the
thunder of the sea swept through her as though she had split.
The companion hatch was opened, and Captain Burke descended. He was
cased in oilskins, and one whole side of him was white with frozen
snow. He came to the table and sat down.
'Now will you tell us what has happened, Edward?' exclaimed his wife,
and she crooked her brows with a straining of her large short-sighted
eyes, shining with fear, to catch the expression on his face as it
showed and shifted in a sort of hysteric agility with the leap of the
shadows under the lamp.
'All three masts are gone by the board.'
'What's to be done, then?'
'Eh? Done?' he cried, white in the face, his eyes keen and hot with
irritability, pulling off his sou'-wester and striking it upon the
table with a blow that dislodged a moulded helmet of snow hard as
plaster, 'we want daylight first. You don't realise here what it's like
on deck. It's a frightful night.' He checked himself with a look at me
and added, 'But we'll have the old jade out of it though it should come
to warping her with the Horn for a kedge. We'll put ye safe ashore,
miss. By God, then, but Sir Mortimer shan't know you for plumpness and
bloom!'
He forced a smile that had more the look of a snarl than a grin with
the teeth he disclosed, his eyes taking no part in it. His wife caught
a bottle from the swing-tray as it swept to her outstretched hand and
mixed a tumbler of drink. He swallowed it, and then picked up a leg of
fowl and a piece of white biscuit, and whilst he alternately bit from
either hand he talked to his wife thus:
'The first outfly was a squall of hurricane force, and it pinned her
right down in the trough. I thought she was gone. The men could only
hold on. The boatswain at last managed to scramble forward, where he
got hold of an axe. He brought it aft, and others taking heart on
hearing him sing out, got into the main chains, and with hatchets
and knives went to work at the lanyards. The mast went, and with it
the other two. It was like the melting of a shadow aloft, with a
crash along the starboard length of her that's made matchwood of the
bulwarks, I allow, and in a minute spars and rigging were over the
side.'
'Is the ship sound?'
'Oh yes, she's tight enough. We've lost Green and four men.'
'Oh, Edward, don't say it! Mr. Green--four men! How did it happen?'
'How does anything happen at sea on a black night aboard a dismantled
ship with hills of ink and foam rolling over her? How it happened ask
of God who did it. They're not aboard.'
He talked with jerking movements of the head, snapping his speech at
her, and his blue eyes were on fire. A look of fear of him gave a new
colour to the expression of horror and consternation in his wife's
face. I sat white and speechless, listening to him and to the booming
artillery of the sea, entering with ceaseless secret terror into the
motions of the ship, all so violent, so extravagantly wild at times
that I would say to myself, 'Now she is gone!'
'Where are the crew?' asked Mrs. Burke.
'Forward in their quarters. There's nothing to keep a look-out for
except daylight. The wreck's gone clear. The wheel's lashed, and
whatever comes _must_ come. Is this the meaning of Old Stormy's visit,
miss?' said he to me with another of his desperate forced grins. 'My
apparition, you know, with a wet face! At sea omens are omens; the
fired part is, you never can tell what form the mischief means to take
so that you can provide against it.'
His wife hid her face.
'None of that!' he roared. 'There must be no breaking down in spirit
here. Miss Otway's to be returned safe and sound to her father. There's
no virtue in snivelling to help that, with all three masts gone and the
night like a wolf's throat, and ice islands close aboard. Where's Owen?'
I said that he was in his cabin. He got up, opened the door, and looked
at him. There was no lamp in the doctor's berth, but the sheen of the
cabin light lay upon the interior. The captain entered the cabin, but
if he spoke I did not hear him. He returned and said:
'He is drunk! I will have a little talk with him by and by. I put you
two into his care and he gets drunk!'
He drew on his sou'wester and stood up, holding by a stanchion.
'Are you going on deck, Edward?' asked his wife.
'Certainly I am.'
'You'll be swept overboard.'
'Not I. I'll rout out a couple of the men and we'll have this carpet
up. Pah! how the salt water stinks! They shall light ye a fire too.
Boil some coffee, Mary. You shall have what you want. I doubt but the
galley's stove. The longboat's safe, but the quarter boats are gone.
She wants steadying--she wants steadying;' and making a step or two he
sprang up the companion ladder and was gone.