THE JURY-MAST
All the remaining hands of the ship's company were at work forward. A
number of spare booms were stowed on top of the galley and had probably
saved the long-boat from being crushed when the masts fell. The sailors
had rigged up a triangle of booms with blocks and tackle dangling, and
even as Mrs. Burke and I stood in the companion way, they broke into
song as they hoisted a huge spar that was to serve as a mast. Their
hearty chorus was frequently interrupted by sharp, eager shouts from
Captain Burke or the boatswain Wall.
The break overhead thinned out yet and made more light. A strange dim
dye of sulphur went sifting down to the horizon, and the sea in places
worked against it dark as bottle glass. About two miles off some whales
were blowing; their vast bulks showed in a black wet gleam amid the
swell; but even then such was the blending of their curved forms with
the confused running, that, but for their fountains, the eye had missed
them.
We stood watching in the shelter of the companion way. The longer I
looked, the stranger, the more forlorn, the more lamentable the scene
showed, the more perilous and hopeless our situation seemed. What sort
of cloths were they going to spread upon such a height of boom as
they were chorusing at? I thought of the spacious concavities which
had risen to the stars, and to the blue heavens of our voyage, those
symmetric breasts of lustrous canvas which, when trimmed, snatched an
impulse for our clipper keel, from the antagonism of the head wind
itself; I saw the ship robed in the beauty of her sails, lifting her
star-saluting royals to the very path of the flying scud with jibs and
staysails yearning from bowsprit and jibboom towards some deeper ocean
solitude past the horizon; and then I looked at the naked boom the men
were hoisting at the triangle or shears.
'Oh, that cannot help us,' I cried; 'what does Captain Burke intend?'
'Even if it should fail as a mast,' Mrs. Burke answered, 'it will be
useful as a flag-post. Why, this hull lies so flat without spars a ship
might pass three or four miles off and not see us.'
Here the captain looked round and spied our heads. With a note of his
old cheerfulness he called out:
'Many a good prize has been navigated out of an ocean battle-field
under leaner sticks than that, and added to the Royal Navy after
tasselling Jack's pocket-handkerchief with dollars.'
This he seemed to say as much for the men as for me. He then approached
and asked me how I did; and told me not to look too long at the wreck.
'Keep up your heart, miss,' said he. 'We'll have you out of this in
good time. Mary, don't let her stand here dwelling upon this scene.
Why, it was a nightmare even to my seasoned eyes when it first came out
of the dawn.'
'Is that mast meant to carry a sail?' said I.
'When we fix it and stay it we'll set something square upon it,
certainly. There'll be room for a bit of fore and aft canvas between
the head of it and the bowsprit end. Then let the wind blow south with
God's blessing, or east or west will do, to edge us north. We need but
steerage way, after which there'll be nothing to do but keep warm till
all's well. Take her below, Mary. Look at her face! She'll wither here.'
The hours of daylight were so few that the night was upon the rolling
hull before the seamen had done more than lash the jury-mast to the
stump with a stay or two for support. And with the darkness of the
night there came along a black Cape Horn snow squall, like a dust storm
in its blinding power, with a thunder of wind in it, and so much more
afterwards that by five o'clock as high a sea was running as that of
the preceding day.
The crew came into the cabin for shelter, and cooked their own supper
as before. They ate and then went to the stove, and afterwards Captain
Burke and his wife and myself sat down to some cold food and a cup of
hot coffee. Mr. Owen came to the door of his berth, but seeing the
captain at table at once retired, closing the door upon himself. The
captain took no notice. His good spirits were gone again. He drank
some coffee, but scarcely tasted food. His posture was one of gloomy
despondency as he sat at table, and he rarely lifted his eyes save to
dart a glance now and again at the sailors, which put it into my head
to think that more worked as causes for his dejection than the new
fierce gale and our awful situation. His wife often furtively looked
towards him but never ventured to address him, no, not even to ask him
if he would eat.
Well, just such another evening and night as had passed happened
with us now. From time to time one or another would go on deck and
come below and report the night a flying blackness. On the boatswain
returning from one of these errands of observation the captain said:
'Does it clear at all?'
'Still as thick as muck, sir.'
'Any smell of ice about?'
'No, sir.'
I wondered to hear them talk of smelling ice in a snow storm as thick
as froth, and said to the captain:
'Is ice to be smelt?'
He looked at me as though he had no mind to answer, to be even civil,
then said sharply, 'Yes.'
My poor old nurse bristled like an angry hen at this behaviour, though
she was still afraid of the mood upon him, yet being determined that
I should get all the comfort possible out of any information the men
could give, she turned upon the boatswain, whose bulky, oilskinned
figure swung on frock-shaped leggings beside the stove, and said:
'Did you ever smell ice, Mr. Wall?'
He looked doubtfully at the captain, and answered awkwardly, 'Yes mum,
scores of times.'
The captain rose and went on deck. At the same moment Mr. Owen came out
of his berth. It might have been that through some crevice in the cabin
bulkhead he was able to observe the captain's movements.
'What sort of smell has ice?' I asked, for I could think of no thing
but icebergs, of the helplessness of our hull, of our being swung by
these giant seas against a berg, and I wanted to hear how sailors tell
that ice is near without seeing it.
'It's the extra coldness that makes the smell. Tain't no smell in the
or'nary meaning,' said the boatswain after a pause. 'The first time I
ever learnt that a man could smell ice in a breeze full of frost and
snow was in my first voyage in these parts. We was running off the
Horn, not so low as this here, in a smother o' flakes, nothen visible
of the ship from the wheel but her mainmast. I and another was steering
the ship, the mate comes rushing aft and sings out to the captain who
was walking abreast of the wheel, "I smell ice, sir." They both took
a sniff, and I could see by their way of snuffing they both smelt it
plain. They looked into the driving smother to starboard and then to
port, and then all on a sudden a man on the fok'sle cries out, "Ice
right ahead." "Hard aport!" sings out the capt'n, and out it jumped,
big as a church, right on the bow. Smelt it myself then.'
A low growl of laughter ran amongst the men, and several looked as
though they too had yarns to spin.
I scarcely slept that night. The cold was terrible, and there were
the noises of the sea and the gale, and the heart-maddening rolling
and plunging. Yet, wonderful to relate, next morning, exactly as on
the day before, a dead calm was in the air, and the swollen hills
of swell ran in liquid lead in a confused shouldering. I went on
deck with Mrs. Burke at about twelve, and watched the men completing
the captain's toy-like affair of jury-mast. They had set a jib upon
the bowsprit, and were now bending a sail to a yard which was to be
hoisted to the head of the jury-mast. The lean stick was so abundantly
stayed that it looked like the inside of an umbrella. The rolls of
the hull were dangerous and very fierce; it was impossible to walk
the deck. This morning they had got a fire in the galley, which had
been roughly repaired. The brown smoke floated straight up out of the
swaying chimney, and, trifling as that detail of colour and life was,
yet somehow it brought back to the poor old hull something of her old
spirit and look. No farmyard sounds came from forward; no grunt from
the long-boat, no cackle nor crow from the hencoop; all the live-stock
had been frozen or drowned during the first night of the gale, when the
masts went.
I saw those glancings of ice on the horizon which I had taken notice
of yesterday; they hung in the same quarters, and flamed at the same
distance against the dark sky with a fairy, star-like brightness. I
turned my eyes in every direction for a sail.
'Don't ships ever come this way?' I asked.
'Oh, yes, many,' answered Mrs. Burke.
'What sort of ships?'
'Whalers chiefly, Edward says.'
'Suppose one should come; what will Captain Burke do?'
'Ask her to tow us.'
'If the master declines? This is a big, helpless vessel for another
ship to tow in such seas as run here. And what would a ship do with us
in tow should we meet with such weather as blew last night or the night
before?'
She made no answer.
'Surely Captain Burke will transfer us all.'
'He'll not leave this vessel,' said she. 'It is not only that he has
himself an uninsured venture in her, his obtaining further employment
might depend upon his carrying the "Lady Emma" into safety. And if it
can be done, it ought to,' she added, with a flat, peering, anxious
look around the sea.
Presently all was ready with the sail. The seamen raised a song, and,
to a steady, shearing noise of ropes in sheaves, with a frequent
chorus that swept like a shout of hope into the bitter, motionless
atmosphere, the yard slowly ascended the jury-mast. It was like a huge
lug-sail in form and fittings. Tauten it as they would, the breast
hollowed and rounded with such blows as of a cudgel, and such claps
as of musketry, that the boom sprang and buckled like a willow in a
breeze; the sail was therefore lowered until wind came to steady it.
It put a weariness as of rheumatism into the body to stand long, and
when we saw the sail hoisted we went below.
Mr. Owen was sitting beside the stove; he rose on our descending, and
went on deck to look around, then, after a brief halt in the shelter
of the companion-way returned, and sat him down at the table with the
fingers of his right hand buried in his right bush of hair, his whole
bearing abjectly disconsolate. Presently, looking at Mrs. Burke, he
exclaimed:
'Is that single pole on the forecastle all the mast the captain means
to navigate this ship with?'
'I do not know. My husband will be glad to tell you, I am sure,'
answered Mrs. Burke.
He gave a ghastly sarcastic smile, that instantly vanished in his
former expression of sullen, resentful grief and dismay, showing, as
a man might, who is under a sudden tragic surprise, which enrages him
also. He looked down, shaking his head softly, and drumming, then
started as if he would walk, but the jerk and tumble of the deck was
too strong. I began to fear for the poor man's mind.
Mrs. Burke told me the men would get dinner in the forecastle that
day--there, or in the galley. They did not come to the cabin. The only
man of them who arrived was the steward. He clothed the table, and made
us a tolerable show of dinner. I beg to recall to your memory the many
delicacies my father had laid in for me.
It was about half-past one, I think, and about the time when the
steward was done with the table, when the companion doors were opened,
and the captain came below. The lamp burned brightly: indeed, it made
most of the light we had. The skylight was, perhaps, half a foot thick
with frozen snow; the companion doors were kept closed to exclude
the cold; and little light came through the cabin windows, which the
hull dipped with pendulum-like monotony into the thunder shadow of
the swollen brine. Yet by the lamp-light we saw very clearly, and I
observed that the captain's face was lighted up with some life and
hope. I thought a sail was in sight, and started, expecting to hear him
say so.
'There's some luck for us in this devil's own ocean after all,' said
he, swinging his figure towards us, eagerly watched by Mr. Owen, who
was on his feet leaning upon the table, and staring with head moving as
the captain moved.
'What is it?' cried his wife hysterically.
'Why,' said he, 'there's a breeze sprung up out of the south'ard:
I've been watching the ship; there's drag enough in the rag we've got
upon her to give her way. And so, Miss Otway, be easy, now that we're
heading for the sun afresh, with a man at the wheel and a little scope
of wake astern of us.'
'Anything better than lying like a log,' cried Mrs. Burke, with a short
swallow in her speech. 'I had hoped from your face there was a ship in
sight.'
'And so did I,' I exclaimed.
Mr. Owen sat down suddenly, and again buried his hand in his hair.
'But this is as good as a ship being in sight,' cried the captain
irritable on a sudden. 'I want to blow north where ships are to be
fallen in with, and we're something to see now, with a thirty foot
hoist of canvas on top ten foot of freeboard; whereas, before--but
let's get something to eat.'
We seated ourselves. Mr. Owen took a corner chair and spoke not a word
for some time, till at last, on the captain saying that if he fell in
with a vessel he would offer handsome sums for a tow, the doctor said
abruptly:
'To where?'
The captain eyed him with an unfeeling pause of contempt, and then
answered:
'That would not rest with you, sir.'
'I must request you to transfer me, if we fall in with a ship,' said
Mr. Owen.
'I shall be happy,' said the captain, nervous and convulsive with
temper, 'at least--you've got to remember the object you're here for.'
He looked at me. 'Miss Otway is not likely to accompany you, and you'll
be no gentleman if you desert her.'
'Miss Otway will accompany me if you give her an opportunity of leaving
this wreck,' said Mr. Owen.
'This is no wreck, sir,' said the captain in a low-level voice of
menace, stooping his head and looking at the doctor under crooked
eyebrows.
Mr. Owen muttered that he intended to save his life if he could, and
Miss Otway's too if he was allowed--the rest he mumbled: after ceasing
to articulate his lips moved; then, with a sudden impassioned motion
of despair and horror, he sprang from his chair and disappeared in his
berth, having barely taken three bites.
'I fear his intellects have become disordered,' said Mrs. Burke.
'He'd like to drive me out of the ship. The lily liver would have me
abandon a craft that's as staunch as the newest line-of-battle ship
afloat. What would it signify to _him_ that I left a couple of thousand
pounds of my hard earnings to go to the bottom here, so long as _his_
dingy skinful of bones and bobs of curls were safely landed?' exclaimed
the captain in a low-pitched deliberate speech, that trembled
nevertheless with emotion and temper.
His wife gave me a look as though she would entreat me not to talk to
him. Now and again he lifted up his eyes to a tell-tale compass that
hung exactly over his chair; almost as regular as the beat of a clock
was the plunge of the ship from right to left, from left to right.
The blinding green sense of one side and then the other of the cabin
portholes, and a loud yearning thunder of water washing past.
After a little the captain went to his cabin. I said I would like to
see the ship under sail, and when we had clothed ourselves for the deck
Mrs. Burke and I went to the companion-steps.
A seaman, clad in oilskins and swathed about the neck till he showed
nothing of his face but a pair of eyes, stood at the wheel. Some
delicate stars and darts of snow were falling, but they did not
cloud the view. The square of white canvas was stretched by a fresh
following breeze of bitter coldness, beyond frost itself: the sea was
feathering upon the swell, and a number of grey and white petrels
skimmed the flashes as they moulded their flight to the wind-furrowed
rounds. The white sail looked like a wild and sickly light when the
hull swung it athwart the soot over the horizon, but there could be no
doubt that the vessel was in motion. We durst not leave the holding
place of the companion-hood to look over the taffrail or side, but you
saw she had steerage way by the manner in which the fellow twirled the
wheel.
A group of seamen with their hands deep buried, some of them sea-booted
fisherman-like to their knees, trudged the white frozen deck opposite
the galley. It was wonderful to see them keep their feet; the rumbling
hum of their strong, lungs stole aft against the wind; they swayed in
earnest talk, and minded us not when they faced our way, again and
again staring round at the sea as though for a sail.
Now we had not been looking about us above five minutes when, happening
to glance aft past the helmsman, I saw the ocean not above half a mile
distant, white as milk, the forestretch of it was about two miles long;
how wide it went back I could not say, nor could I guess what it was;
there was no snow nor any particular blackness of cloud over it, nor
uncommon wildness of flight in the vapour overhanging us. Before I
could call Mrs. Burke's attention to the wonder, the seaman at the helm
turned and spied it, and instantly roared out in a voice that swept
past the ear like the wind of something heavy swiftly flying.
'Why,' cried Mrs. Burke--but the rest of the sentence was clipped sheer
off her lips in a yell of squall, a very hurricane blast; the air was
dark with spray, in the midst of which I just caught sight of the
jury-mast and sail disappearing--not abruptly, but in a dissolving
way, as a snowflake dies on water. The whole thing went in the shriek
of the blast, with a single report and a snowstorm of flying tatters;
the next instant Mrs. Burke was dragging me down the companion-steps
and we both got into the cabin dazed, frozen to the marrow, as much
confounded and terrified by that sudden meteoric shock and blast of
wind, with its burthen of white brine and its noise of fierce yells and
whistlings, as though we had scarcely escaped with our lives.
The captain heard, or guessed what had happened; he rushed from his
berth on to the deck, but the squall pinned him in the companion-way
for a minute, and he stood struggling as though some man had taken him
by the throat. In five minutes, however, the furious outburst was spent
or had flown ahead; I could tell that by glancing at the cabin windows
whenever they lifted clear. The steward came below to trim the lamp.
Mrs. Burke asked him what was doing on deck. He answered, nothing, and
told us what we knew, that the jury-mast and sail had blown over the
bows.
It was now to be felt by the distressful, horrid, jerky motion, that
the hull had taken up her old situation in the trough.
'What has happened?' said Mr. Owen, coming out of his berth.
Mrs. Burke told him. He groaned, and sat down close beside the stove,
folding his arms tightly, and said:
'What is to become of us? This is distracting. I am prepared to meet my
Maker, but it is the suspense--it is the suspense--it is the having to
wait for death that crazes.'
'I am surprised at you,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, drawing herself up.
'How, as a man, can you talk so before this young lady? As for me, I
don't mind what you say; I am the wife of a sailor, and it's not in you
to improve my spirits or make me despair. But you have no right to
forget yourself as a man before Miss Otway.'
He slapped his knee violently, crying out, 'Poor as I am, I would give
five hundred pounds had I never heard of your husband or his ship.'
The poor woman looked at him with her flat eyes and curled her lip,
then gave me an expressive glance when he arose and began to move about
the cabin, holding on and looking at the windows to left and right as
they soared blind with the foam dazzle.
It was dark as midnight on deck before the captain came below, and yet
it may not have been three o'clock. He approached the fire and stood
before it, his wife and myself sitting on either hand of him. He seemed
to steadfastly regard Mr. Owen, who was on a locker at the after end of
the cabin, but did not offer to speak. Presently his wife said:
'Are the mast and sail lost for good, Edward?'
'Ay.'
'What was the whiteness that swept them away?'
'What but a squall? This is a great ocean, and mark our luck; there
were thousands of miles of water for that squall to sweep over on
either hand of us, but Old Stormy bestrode it, and, scenting us, made
for the hull.'
'There are other booms to rig up a mast with.'
'So there are,' he answered, speaking quietly, with his eyes fixed upon
the form of the doctor as though he addressed him. 'There are other
spars, but there's not another crew to do the work.'
His wife gave a start at this and looked up at him with a passion of
anxiety, putting her hand upon his arm.
'The men have as good as told me,' said he, 'through the bo'sun, that
there's nothing to be done with jury-masts. They're willing to try
their hands to-morrow on another--to oblige me--but they'd rather get
my permission to prepare the long-boat for leaving the ship so as
to give chase to a sail if one should show too far off to speak us:
failing that, then to take advantage of a smooth in the weather and to
make for the northward in an open boat--in this sea--the idiots!'
'But something must be done,' shouted Mr. Owen from his corner. 'The
ship will go to pieces if she's to be left to knock about in this
hollow sea.'
Captain Burke took no more notice than had the doctor's voice been the
creaking of a bulkhead.
It was quieter on that than on the preceding night. The wind, we
learnt, was a scanty breeze out of the south; here and there the vapour
had thinned, and a pale star shivered in the openings: our drift that
day had lifted some northward point of ice, and the dim faintness of
it was visible on the port beam, as the helpless hull lay; that was
all the ice to be seen, and it was far enough off to keep us easy. A
large black swell was flowing north and south, but the folds were wide
and regular and the motion of the hull was almost easy upon it. These
matters about that scene of night outside I got from the captain and
steward.
The sailors remained forward. I understood they managed very well now
they could keep the galley fire going. Once during this evening I asked
Captain Burke, when he came below for a glass of hot grog and biscuit,
why he did not burn a signal fire.
'And risk setting the hull in a blaze?' said he, 'with the chance of
there being nothing within five hundred miles of us.'
'It might bring help, Edward,' said his wife.
He flung from us in a passion. It was a bad sign with him now, that
the merest nothings, such as my question, put him into a rage. He
swallowed his glass of grog and returned on deck, and when half-way
up the companion ladder he paused to shout back, 'No use in making a
flare unless there's something to signal to,' and then stepped into the
blackness outside.
It was fine weather next day--fine for that part of the world, I mean;
glimpses of watery blue, betwixt curtains of ashy yellow and brown
vapour, some slanting pencils of dull sulphur in the north, striking
the line of the horizon out of a long ragged edge of cloud. The wind
was west, fresh enough to flash plumes of spray out of the running
wrinkles; there was the head of an iceberg away north to the right of
the weak shower of sunshine. This was all to be seen--saving always the
hull with her deck of frozen snow, and her catheads barbed with ice,
and her lines of rails bristling with daggers and small arms of frozen
dew and brine--when I looked through the companion hatch after leaving
my cabin.
Whilst Mrs. Burke, Mr. Owen and myself breakfasted, we heard the people
on deck busy with another jury-mast. The captain's voice rang out again
in loud eager shouts. Mrs. Burke sent the steward up to beg her husband
come below and breakfast whilst the coffee was hot; he sent answer
that he could not leave; but even whilst the steward was delivering
the captain's reply, a long strange hallo was delivered by one of the
men; the sounds of bustle ceased; in a minute or two we heard a rush
of feet; Mr. Owen jumped from his chair and ran up the ladder, whence,
after he had paused to stare round, he shouted down in a voice of
ecstasy:--
'A sail, Mrs. Burke! There's a ship in sight, Miss Otway!'
I screamed with a sudden impulse of delight; I could no more have
arrested that cry than have stopped the hull from rolling; then,
swiftly as my legs would carry me and my arms would work, I gained
my berth and attired myself for the deck, and rushed up reckless of
foothold.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME
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End of Project Gutenberg's Heart of Oak, vol. 1., by William Clark Russell