_HE SIGHTS A WRECK._
But at last came a day when the meridian of Staten Island was passed
under our counter; and when eight bells had been made, the ship’s course
was altered, and we were once more heading for the sun with a strong
wind on the beam, the ocean working in long sapphire lines of creaming
billows, the ship leaning down under a maintopgallant sail, with a single
reef in the topsail under it, and the sailors going about their work with
cheerful countenances; for this northward course made us all feel that we
were really and truly homeward bound at last.
It was thought that our passage would be a smart one, as good a run as
any on record, for though, to be sure, we had been detained a bit off the
Horn by the frequent heaving to of the ship, yet we had traversed the
long stretch of the South Pacific very briskly, whilst for a long eight
days now there blew a strong, steady beam wind that drove us through it
at an average of two hundred and fifty miles in the twenty-four hours.
With less weight in the breeze we should have done better still. We could
never show more than a maintopgallant sail to it, and the high seas were
by no means helpful to the heels of the ship. Yet Cape Horn was speedily
a long way astern of us; the horrible weather of it was forgotten as pain
is. Every night, stars which had become familiar to us were sinking in
the south, and new constellations soaring out of the horizon over the
bows. It was delightful to handle the ropes, and find them supple as coir
instead of stiff as iron bars, to pick up the sails, and feel them soft
again to the touch instead of that hardness of sheets of steel which they
gathered to them in the frosty parallels. The sun shone with a warmth
that was every day increasing in ardency; the dry decks sparkled crisply
like the white firm sand of the sea-beach. The live-stock grew gay and
hearty with the Atlantic temperature: the cocks crew cheerily, the hens
cackled with vigour, the sheep bleated with voices which filled our
salted, weather-toughened heads with visions of green meadows, of fields
enamelled with daisies, of hedges full of nosegays, and of twinkling
green branches melodious with birds.
We slipped into the south-east trade wind, and bore away for the equator
under fore-topmast studding-sail.
[Illustration: “I ... SAT RIDING A-COCK-HORSE OF IT” (p. 231).]
One moonlight night a fancy to view the ship from the bowsprit entered my
mind. I went on to the forecastle and crawled out on to the jibboom, and
there sat riding a-cock-horse of it, holding by the outer jib-stay. The
moon shone brightly over the maintopsail yard-arm; all sail was on the
ship, and she was leaning over from the fresh breeze like a yacht in a
racing match. The moonlight made her decks resemble ivory, and stars of
silver glory sparkled fitfully along them in the glass and brass work.
The whole figure of the noble fabric seemed to be rushing at me; the foam
poured like steam from her stem that was smoking and sheering through the
ocean surge. Over my head soared the great jibs, like the wings of some
mighty spirit. My heart leapt up in me to the rise and fall of the spar
that I jockeyed. It was like sitting at one end of a leviathan see-saw,
and every upheaval was as exhilarating as a flight through the air. Ah,
thought I, as I leisurely made my way inboards, if sailoring were always
as pleasant as _this_, I believe I should wish to continue at sea all my
life.
It was two days afterwards, at about half-past six in the morning watch,
that a fellow in the foretop hailed the deck and reported a black object
on the lee-bow which, he said, didn’t look like a ship, though it was a
deal too big for a long-boat. I was staring wistfully in the direction
the man had indicated. Mr. Johnson noticed this, and said, with a
kind smile (I seemed to be a favourite of his, maybe because I was but
a little chap to be at sea, otherwise I do not know what particularly
entitled me to his kindness)—
“Here, Rockafellar, take my glass into the foretop, and see what you can
make of the object.”
I was very proud of this commission, and not a little pleased to escape
even for a short spell the grimy, prosaic business of scrubbing the poop.
The telescope was a handsome instrument in a case, the strap of which I
threw over my shoulder; and, slipping on a pair of shoes (for I never
could endure the pressure of the ratlines against the soles of my naked
feet), I got into the shrouds and arrived in the foretop.
“Where is it?” said I to a man who stood peering seawards, with a hairy
tar-stained hand protecting his eyes.
He pointed.
I levelled the glass, and in an instant beheld the black hull of a ship
lying deep in the water, rolling heavily, yet very sluggishly. All three
masts were gone, and a few splinters forking out between her knight-heads
were all that remained of her bowsprit.
The sailor asked leave to look, and putting his eye to the telescope,
exclaimed—
“_Here’s_ a bad job, I lay. She’s a settling down too. She’ll be out
of sight under water afore we’re abreast, or I’m a Kanaka,” by which he
meant a South Sea Islander.
[Illustration: “HE POINTED.”]
I made my way to the deck, and reported what I had seen to the chief
mate. It was not twenty minutes after this when a loud cry arose from
the forecastle, followed by a rush of men to the rail, to see what the
fellow who had called out was pointing at. We of the poop, forgetting
the ship’s discipline in the excitement raised by the shout and headlong
hurry of men forward, ran to the side to look also, and we saw close
against the lee-bow of the ship, fast sliding along past the side, the
figure of a man in a lifebuoy. He was naked to the waist; his arms
overhung the circle, but his form, leaning forward, had so tilted the
buoy that his head lay under water. He rose and fell upon the seas, which
sometimes threw him a little way out and then submerged him again, with
his long hair streaming like grass at the bottom of a shallow running
stream.
The sailors along the waist and on the forecastle were looking aft, as
though they expected that the mate would back the topsail yard and send
a boat; but the man that had gone past was dead as dead can be: even my
young eyes could have told _that_, though his head had been above water
all the time.
“It is a recent wreck, I expect, sir,” I heard Mr. Johnson say to the
captain, who stepped on deck at that moment. “The poor fellow didn’t look
to have been in the water long.”
“There was no doubt he was a corpse?” inquired the captain, to whose
sight the form of the drowned man was invisible, so rapidly had it veered
astern into the troubled and concealing foam of our wake.
“Oh yes, sir,” answered Mr. Johnson. “His face only lifted now and again.”
At eight bells the wreck was in sight from the poop, but at a long
distance. I went below to get some breakfast, and then returned, too much
interested in the object that had hove into view to stay in the cabin,
though I had been on deck since four o’clock, and had scarcely slept more
than two hours during the middle watch.
Our ship’s helm had been slightly shifted, so that we might pass the
wreck close. As we advanced, fragments of the torn and mutilated fabric
passed us; portions of yards, of broken masts with the attached gear
snaking out from it, casks, hatch-covers, and so forth. It was easy to
guess, by the look of these things, that they had been wrenched from the
hull by a hurricane. I noticed a length of sail-cloth attached to a yard,
with a knot in it so tied that I did not need to have been at sea many
months to guess that nothing could have done it but some furious ocean
blast.
We all stood looking with eagerness towards the wreck—the ladies with
opera-glasses to their eyes, the gentlemen with telescopes; the captain
aft was constantly viewing her through his glass, and the second mate,
who had charge of the deck, watched her through the shrouds of the main
rigging with the intentness of a pirate whose eyes are upon a chase.
The fact was, it was impossible to tell whether there might be human
beings aboard of her, let alone the sort of pathetic interest one found
in the sight of the lonely object rolling out yonder in a drowning way
amidst the sparkling morning waters of the blue immensity of the deep.
Only a little while ago, I thought to myself as I surveyed her, she was
a noble ship; her white sails soared, she sat like a large summer cloud
upon the water, the foam sparkled at her fore-foot; like ourselves, she
might have been homeward bound—and now see her! Hearts which were lately
beating in full life, are silent—stilled for ever in those cold depths
upon whose surface she is heaving.
There is no object in life, I think, that appeals more solemnly to
the mind than a wreck fallen in with far out at sea. She is an image
of death, and the thought of the eternity that follows upon death is
symbolized by the secret green profound in whose depths she will shortly
be swallowed up.
The hull lay so deep in the water that the name under her counter was
buried, and not to be read. A flash of light broke from her wet black
side each time she rolled from the sun, and the brilliant glare was so
much like the crimson gleam of a gun, that again and again I would catch
myself listening for the noise of the explosion, as though forsooth there
were people firing signals to us aboard her.
“An eight hundred ton ship at least,” the captain told the ladies, “and
a very fine model. Oh yes! She’s been hammered to pieces by a storm of
wind. She has no boats, you see, so let us hope her people managed to get
away in safety, and that they are by this time on board a ship.”
“I daresay,” said a young fellow, one of the cuddy passengers, “that her
hold is full of valuable goods. Pity we couldn’t take her in tow and
carry her home with us. Why shouldn’t the cargo of such a vessel as that
be worth—call it twenty thousand pounds if you will? There’s just money
enough in that figure to make me tolerably comfortable for the rest of
my life. Confounded nonsense to have a fortune under your nose, and be
obliged to watch it sink!”
“Well, Mr. Graham,” said the captain, laughing, “there’s the hulk, sir.
If you have a mind to take charge of her, I’ll put you on board. Nothing
venture nothing have, you know. That’s particularly the case at sea.”
“Too late! too late!” growled out the bass voice of an old major who had
been making the tour of the world for his health. “_See there!_” and he
pointed a long, skinny, trembling forefinger at the wreck.
She was sinking as he spoke! It was as wild a sight in its way as you
could conceive; she put her bow under and lifted her stern, and made her
last dive as though she were something living. She disappeared swiftly;
indeed the ocean was rolling clear to the horizon before you could
realise that the substantial object, which a moment or two before was
floating firm to your sight, was gone.
The young gentleman named Graham shuddered as he turned away.
It was an hour after this that one of the midshipmen came into our berth,
and said that a ship’s boat had been made out right ahead. Nothing living
in her had as yet been distinguished.
“The notion of course is,” said he, “that she belonged to the wreck that
we passed this morning.”
I was reading in my bunk, but on hearing this, I immediately hopped out
and went on deck. There was more excitement now than before. A crowd of
the passengers were staring from the poop, with knots of steerage folks
and a huddle of the ship’s idlers on the forecastle, craning their necks
under the bowsprit and past the jibs to get a view. Indeed, whilst the
midshipmen had been telling us about this boat below, a glimpse had been
caught of something moving over the low gunwale of her—some said it was
a cap that had been waved; but whatever it was it had not shown again.
However, everybody was now sure that there was something alive in the
boat, and we all seemed to hold our breath whilst we waited. It was an
ordinary ship’s quarter-boat painted white.
“There again!” shouted somebody. “Did you see it? A man’s head it looked
like.”
“Ay,” said the second mate, who had his telescope bearing on the boat at
the moment: “a head, and no mistake; but of what kind, though? More like
a cocoa-nut, to my fancy, than a man’s nob.”
“There he is! there’s the poor creature!” cried a lady in a sort of
shriek, with an opera-glass at her eyes. “He’s standing up—he has fallen
backwards—ah! he’s up again. But, oh dear me!—can it be a man?”
“With a tail!” said the second mate, who continued to ogle the boat
through his telescope. “Bless my heart!—why—why—captain, I believe it’s a
great monkey!”
In a few minutes the boat was under the bow, and a strange roar of
mingled wonder and laughter came floating aft to us from the crowd on
the forecastle. It was a monkey, as the second mate had said—a big ape,
with strong white whiskers, which ringed the lower part of his face like
wool. He had evidently been some crew’s pet; a small velvet cap with a
yellow tassel, like a smoking cap, was secured to his head; he also wore
a pair of large spectacles apparently cut out of thin white wood. His
body was clothed in a short jacket of some faded reddish material, with
a slit behind for the convenience of his tail, the end of which was raw,
as though he had been lately breakfasting off it. His legs were cased in
their native hair, which was long, something like a goat’s.
[Illustration: “IT WAS A MONKEY.”]
One could see that the poor beast was terribly weak. He would climb up on
a thwart, then fall backwards, and, as his boat slipped past, he lay on
his side looking up at us through his spectacles with the most woebegone,
piteous, grinning face of appeal that ever monkey in this world assumed.
There was a sudden explosion of laughter from amongst us; no man could
help himself. Indeed, the first sight of the boat had put some fancies of
horrors to be disclosed into our heads, and the change, from our notion
of beholding dead or dying human beings, into this apparition of a huge
monkey in a smoking cap and spectacles, was so violent and ridiculous a
surprise that it proved too much for the gravest amongst the crowd aft.
“Hands to the topsail braces!” bawled the captain; “lay the maintopsail
to the mast. We must pick the poor brute up.”
The _Lady Violet_ was brought to a stand. Five men in charge of the
second mate sprang into a lee-quarter boat; the tackles were slacked
away, and in a few minutes our boat was alongside the other, with two of
the fellows handing out the monkey, that lay as quiet as a baby in their
arms.
Everybody crowded on to the main-deck to get a view of the poor beast
when the boat had brought him alongside. He had the look of an old man;
and though you saw that the unhappy animal was suffering, his grimaces
were so ugly, the appeal of his bloodshot eyes through his spectacles so
ludicrously human-like, that he made you laugh the louder at him somehow
or other for the very pity that he excited in you.
“Get him water and food, lads, some of you,” cried the second mate from
the poop; “treat him as though he were mortal like yourselves. He’ll take
all ye’ll give him and more than he ought to have; and we haven’t saved
him to perish of a bust-up.”
He was carried to the forecastle followed by a crowd of sailors and
steerage people, and I lost sight of him, though I hung about, boy-like,
for a bit, hoping they would bring him forth presently. However, it
seemed that after the seamen had given him a drink of water and a couple
of biscuits to eat, they took off his cap and spectacles and put him into
a hammock with a blanket up to his throat, where he lay like a human
being, rolling a languishing eye round upon those who looked at him,
until he fell asleep.
The name _Dolphin_, Boston, was painted in the stern-sheets of the
boat in which the monkey was, and of course it was supposed, fore and
aft, that that was the name of the wreck we had fallen in with. But I
afterwards heard—when I had been home some months—that the hull we had
seen founder was a large English barque called the _Elijah Gorman_,
whilst the boat from which we had taken the monkey had belonged to the
Yankee craft whose name was on her. How the boat happened to have been
adrift, and how her sole occupant should have been a monkey, I never
could get to hear, though my father made many inquiries, being much
interested in my story of this little affair. The crew of the _Elijah
Gorman_ had been taken off by a steamer bound to England from a South
American port; so full particulars concerning her loss had been published
in the newspapers some time before we arrived in the Thames.