_HE ARRIVES HOME._
He had scarcely uttered these words when a shock ran through the ship
for all the world as though the heave of the swell had let her fall
with violence upon some hard shoal. The decks trembled as though to an
explosion. The tremor of the fabric seemed to enter into one’s very
marrow, and it would be impossible to express the sense of dismay it
excited, happening as it did on a black night, and in the middle of the
wide ocean where we knew there could be no shoals for hundreds of leagues.
The light at the yard-arm vanished; there was a noise of hurrying feet
forwards, with a rumbling of exclamations uttered in agitation.
“What was that?” was shouted from the companion-hatch in the captain’s
familiar accents. “Mr. Johnson?”
“Sir?”
“What have we struck? Is there any ship near us?”
“I don’t know, sir,” answered the mate; “it has been as black as thunder
all through.”
“Get a cast of the lead,” exclaimed the captain, but quietly, with no
note of hurry in his voice; “send the carpenter aft to sound the pumps;
get lanterns up to show a light over the side.”
The blow felt as though the ship had struck some floating wreck. In a
minute the vessel was wide awake. The shock had aroused the sleepers,
who came tumbling up pell-mell out of cabin and forecastle. The decks,
which before were of a death-like stillness, were now alive with sailors
running about, with passengers full of excitement and fear, with lanterns
briskly travelling from place to place, with one stationary one at the
pumps, where the white-haired carpenter stood lowering his sounding-rod,
with the deliberation of a Scotchman, down the well.
There was nothing to be seen over the side, and there was no more water
in the bottom of the ship than was always to be found there. The sea was
sounded all around with the hand-lead, but, as will readily be supposed,
no bottom was got.
In the midst of this commotion the heavens seemed to be split open by
a flash of lightning; the whole surface of the ocean shone out to its
farthest confines to the crimson blaze, and then came, within three
seconds of the terrific glare, a crash of thunder right overhead. The
enormous explosion liberated the rain; down it came, a very Niagara
Falls of water! In a trice it was up to a man’s knees in the main-deck,
and every mother’s son of us was as a drowned rat, soaked through and
through; the passengers rushing headlong to the hatches, and the sailors
floundering about here and there to the hurried cries of the mate
ordering sail to be shortened.
There was no more lightning, but the rain continued to fall in a living
sheet of water, which flashed the fire up out of the sea all about us.
Indeed, the black atmosphere was extraordinarily full of electricity, and
even through the blinding veil of the rain you could catch a sight of
bluish sparks glittering about the ironwork, with the coming and going
of nebulous lights upon the yard-arms and bowsprit. The ship was snugged
down, but the furling of the wet and beating canvas was hard work. You
could not see an inch before your face. I had to grope my way on to the
mizzen topsail yard as a man might through a small tunnel in the bottom
of a pyramid. The foot-ropes were as slippery as ice, and as my legs
were very short my situation was one of real danger, not more due to the
sickening rolling and strong beating of the heavy saturated canvas than
to the circumstance of Poole being alongside of me—by which I mean that
his long legs, like a pair of compasses, weighed down the foot-rope upon
which we were standing into an angle down which I would slide, until
my feet were off the line, and there was nothing to save me from going
overboard but my grip of the jack-stay.
All the while that we were working we expected the mass of impenetrable
shadow that hung over our heads, dark as the midnight inkiness of a
vault, to burst into a roaring gale of wind; yet all remained quiet; the
rain ceased; saving the straining noises of the rolling ship there was
nothing to be heard but the sobbing of water cascading off the decks
overboard through the scupper holes. No more shocks were felt, though
I fancy the nerves of us all continued on the strain in expectation of
such another thump as that which had sent the people below running up in
terror through the hatches.
At midnight it was still a thick black calm, and the same high swell
working that had been running throughout the watch. I was not a little
rejoiced to hear the chimes of the bell, for I had been soaked by the
downfall to the very marrow, yet durst not leave the deck for a minute
to change my wet clothes for dry ones. We turned in dog-tired, and slept
without a stir throughout the four hours; and when we were called again
at four o’clock the stars were shining, the moon was setting in the
west, a fresh breeze was blowing over our starboard quarter, and the
_Lady Violet_ was once more driving through it on her way home under
canvas that clothed her from truck to waterway.
What it was that we had struck or that had struck us could only be a
matter of conjecture. The captain was of opinion that the shock had been
caused by a submarine earthquake—a volcanic explosion deep down. “It was
the right sort of night,” he argued, “for disturbances of that kind; the
water full of fire, and the atmosphere tingling with electricity.” On
the other hand, Mr. Johnson had no doubt that the ship had received a
blow from the rising of a whale under her keel. The creature had risen to
spout, but had been frightened by the thump it had given itself and made
off.
It was a thing, as I had said, that one could only speculate upon. The
ship was divided into two parties, one accepting the captain’s and the
other the mate’s opinion. Which side I declared for I do not remember;
but on recurring to the incident at this distance of time, I have no
doubt whatever that the mate was in the right, for since those days I
have been on board a ship where an earthquake has happened in the deep
sea beneath her, and the sort of vibratory scraping sensation that
accompanied the shock was entirely different from the dull lumpish thud
that had made every heart in the _Lady Violet_ beat fast on that black
night.
As we approached the entrance to the English Channel ships grew numerous,
and every hour yielded us a fresh canvas of ocean panorama. At daybreak
one morning we spied a large ship right ahead, and by four o’clock in
the afternoon had approached her close enough to read the name upon her
stern; and great was our triumph when we discovered that she was the fine
clipper ship _Owen Glendower_, that had left Sydney eight days before us.
We passed her in the night, and the watch on deck let fly an ironical
cheer at her, taking their chance of being heard, and at sunrise next
morning nothing but her royal and topgallant sails were visible on the
shining line of the horizon.
[Illustration: “A FINE CUTTER CAME THRASHING THROUGH IT.”]
It was rather thick weather in the Channel, and we saw no land till we
made the South Foreland. A fine cutter came thrashing through it to
alongside of us when off Dungeness, and a pilot climbed out of her over
our side. With what profound interest, and joy, and admiration did my
young eyes explore his purple visage, and survey his stout coat and the
warm shawl round his neck! He had not been on board ten minutes when the
sun shone forth, and the green and frothing waters of the Channel showed
clear to the horizon. Then it was that the coast of our dear old home lay
fair and beautiful upon our port beam and bow—white cliffs slopes of
green sward, delicate as satin, groups of Liliputian houses, with windows
sparkling, the chocolate-coloured canvas of smacks, the white wings of
pleasure-yachts, the grimy cloths of round-bowed, black-hulled colliers,
enriching the surface of the laughing seas betwixt us and the line of
shingle upon which the surf was surging.
Off the South Foreland a tug chased and cleverly hooked us by making a
short cut to the North Foreland, where she intercepted us as we swept
round in a large, majestic arch, with the red-hulled lightship stationed
abreast of Ramsgate resting like a spot of colour against the yellow
shelf of the Goodwin Sands, on our port quarter, and a busy scene of
shipping opening under our bows as we headed for the River Thames. But
the shift of helm brought the wind ahead, and by this time our captain
and the skipper of the tug, having agreed upon the question of terms for
towage, the order was given to clew up and furl; a line from the tug was
hove to us, the end of a huge hawser attached to it and paid out over
the bow, and presently the _Lady Violet_, in tow of the panting little
steamer, was quietly gliding along for her home in the East India Docks,
with her crew aloft sending down sails and unreeving gear.
News of our being in the Channel had reached my father long before we had
arrived in the river, and he was one of the first to step on board when
we had been warped to our berth in the docks.
I was below, polishing myself up to go ashore, when Kennet called through
the hatch that my father was on the quarter-deck and waiting to see me.
I rushed up, and in a moment was in his arms. I had no objection to his
kissing me now; in fact, I may say that I kissed him. The overstrained
sense of manliness in me was gone. I was a young sailor with a full
heart, and there were tears both in my father’s and my own eyes as he
drew away from me, after our first hug, to have a good look at me.
“The picture of health!—gracious, how sunburnt—grown a whole foot, I do
declare!—my goodness, Tommy, what shoulders!”
This, and the like, was all he could say for some time. I asked after my
mother, my sisters, my little brother. Thank God, they were all well, and
eagerly awaiting my arrival at home.
“I have ordered a jolly good dinner at the Brunswick Hotel,” said my
father; “let us go and partake of it, my son. But first you will say
good-bye to the officers and your shipmates.”
[Illustration: “WERE SEATED AT A TABLE.”]
The captain was not to be seen. Mr. Johnson shook me cordially by the
hand and assured my father that I had the making of a sailor in me. All
the midshipmen had hurried ashore with the exception of Kennet, who was
below, sitting on a chest smoking his pipe when I descended to say
farewell to such of the lads as I could find in the cabin. He pretended
to weep as he squeezed my hand.
I said, “Kennet, are you not going ashore?”
“Yeth,” he said; “but I muth finith my pipe firtht.”
“Kennet,” I said, “come and dine with my father and me. He has ordered a
good dinner to be in readiness for us at the Brunswick Hotel.”
He threw down the sooty clay pipe he had been smoking and jumped up.
“Rockafellar,” he said, “I alwayth thaid you were a brick!”
A little later, my father, Kennet, and myself were seated at a table,
white with damask and sparkling with glass, in a window overlooking the
Docks. Oh! the excellence of the roast beef! Oh! the sweetness of the
cauliflower with its melted butter! Oh! the incomparable flavour of the
mealy potatoes!
“Ithth the change from thalt horthe, thir, that maketh it nithe,” said
Kennet, with his mouth full.
And so ended Master Rockafellar’s voyage. Would you like to know if I
ever went to sea again? Well it is a question that need not signify just
now. If this little yarn which I have been spinning has amused you, then,
should you desire more by-and-by, I don’t doubt there is enough stuff
stowed away in the locker of my memory to make plenty of “twisters,” as
stories are called at sea. Meanwhile, boys and girls, I touch the peak of
my midshipman’s cap to you in respectful farewell.
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, WOKING AND LONDON.