STORM AND SHIPWRECK.
The gale held without much change through the night, and then with
morning shifted a few points to the westward, which was nothing to
complain of. The sea rose, and a few rain squalls came up and passed;
but they had no weight in them, and did not keep the waves down as a
steady fall will. And all day long it was the same, and the ship fled
ever before it. There was no thought now of reaching any port we might
wish, but least of all did we think of making the Lindsey shore, which
lies open to the north and east. When the gale broke, we must find
harbour where we could; and indeed; to my father at this time all ports
were alike, as refuge from Hodulf. When darkness came again one of the
wounded men died, and Havelok was yet ill in the after cabin, so that
my mother was most anxious for him. The plunging ship was no place for
a sick child.
Now it was not possible for us to tell how far we had run since we had
parted from the Viking, and all we knew was that we had no shore to
fear with the wind as it was, and therefore nothing but patience was
needed. But in the night came a sudden lull in the gale that told of a
change at hand, and in half an hour it was blowing harder than ever
from the northeast, and setting us down to the English coast fast, for
we could do naught but run before such a wind. It thickened up also,
and was very dark even until full sunrise, so that one could hardly
tell when the sun was above the sea’s rim.
I crept from the fore cabin about this time, after trying in vain to
sleep, and found the men sheltering under the break of the deck and
looking always to leeward. Two of them were at the steering oar with my
father, for Arngeir was worn out, and I had left him in the cabin,
sleeping heavily in spite of the noise of waves and straining planking.
Maybe he would have waked in a moment had that turmoil ceased.
It was of no use trying to speak to the men without shouting in their
ears, and getting to windward to do that, moreover, and so I looked
round to see if there was any change coming. But all was grey overhead,
and a grey wall of rain and flying drift from the wave tops was all
round us, blotting out all things that were half a mile from us, if
there were anything to be blotted out. It always seems as if there must
be somewhat beyond a thickness of any sort at sea. But there was one
thing that I did notice, and that was that the sea was no longer grey,
as it had been yesterday, but was browner against the cold sky, while
the foam of the following wave crests was surely not so white as it had
been, and at this I wondered.
Then I crawled aft and went to my father and asked him what he thought
of the wind and the chance of its dropping. He had had the lead going
for long now.
“We are right off the Humber mouth, to judge by the colour of the
water,” he told me, “or else off the Wash, which is more to the south.
I cannot tell which rightly, for we have run far, and maybe faster than
I know. If only one could see—”
There he stopped, and I knew enough to understand that we were in some
peril unless a shift of wind came very soon, since the shore was under
our lee now, if by good luck we were not carried straight into the
great river itself. So for an hour or more I watched, and all the time
it seemed that hope grew less, for the sea grew shorter, as if against
tide, and ever its colour was browner with the mud of the Trent and her
sisters.
Presently, as I clung to the rail, there seemed to grow a new sound
over and amid all those to which I had become used—as it were a low
roaring that swelled up in the lulls, and sank and rose again. And I
knew what it was, and held up my hand to my father, listening, and he
heard also. It was the thunder of breakers on a sandy coast to leeward.
He put his whistle to his lips and called shrilly, and the men saw him
if they could not hear, and sprang up, clawing aft through the water
that flooded the waist along the rail.
“Breakers to leeward, men,” he cried “we must wear ship, and then shall
clear them. We shall be standing right into Humber after that, as I
think.”
Arngeir heard the men trampling, if not the whistle, and he was with us
directly, and heard what was to be done.
“It is a chance if the yard stands it,” he said, looking aloft.
“Ay, but we cannot chance going about in this sea, and we are too short
of men to lower and hoist again. Listen!”
Arngeir did so, and heard for the first time the growing anger of the
surf on the shore, and had no more doubt. We were then running with the
wind on the port quarter, and it was useless to haul closer to the wind
on that tack, whereas if we could wear safely we should be leaving the
shore at once by a little closer sailing.
“Ran is spreading her nets,” said Arngeir, “but if all holds, she will
have no luck with her fishing.”[6]
Then we manned the main sheet and the guys from the great yards, but we
were all too few for the task, which needed every man of the fifteen
that we had sailed with. There was the back stay to be set up afresh on
the weather quarter for the new tack also, and three men must see to
that.
We watched my father’s hand for the word, and steadily sheeted home
until all seemed to be going well. But the next moment there was a
crash and a cry, and we were a mastless wreck, drifting helplessly.
Maybe some flaw of wind took us as the head of the great sail went
over, but its power was too much for the men at guys and back stay, and
they had the tackle torn through their hands. The mast snapped six feet
above the deck, smashing the gunwales as it fell forward and overboard,
but hurting none of us.
Then a following sea or two broke over the stern, and I was washed from
the poop, for I had been at the sheet, down to the deck, and there
saved myself among the fallen rigging, half drowned. One of the men was
washed overboard at the same time, but a bight of the rigging that was
over the side caught him under the chin, and his mates hauled him on
board again by the head, as it were. He was wont to make a jest of it
afterward, saying that he was not likely to be hanged twice, but he had
a wry neck from that day forward.
No more seas came over us, for the wreck over the bows brought us head
to wind, though we shipped a lot of water across the decks as she
rolled in the sea. Then we rode to the drag of the fallen sail for a
time, and it seemed quiet now that there was no noise of wind screaming
in rigging above us. But all the while the thunder of the breakers grew
nearer and plainer.
I bided where I was, for the breath was knocked out of me for the
moment. I saw my father lash the helm, and then he and the rest got the
two axes that hung by the cabin door, and came forward with them. The
mast was pounding our side in a way that would start the planking
before long, and it must be cut adrift, and by that time I could join
him.
When that was done, and it did not take long, we cleared the anchor and
cable and let go, for it was time. The sound of the surf was drowning
all else. But the anchor held, and the danger was over for the while,
and as one might think altogether; but the tide was running against the
gale, and what might happen when it turned was another matter.
Now we got the sail on deck again, and unlaced it from the yard,
setting that in place with some sort of rigging, ready to be stepped as
a mast if the wind shifted to any point that might help us off shore.
It may be thought how we watched that one cable that held us from the
waves and the place where they broke, for therein lay our only chance,
and we longed for the clear light that comes after rain, that we might
see the worst, at least, if we were to feel it. But the anchor held,
and presently we lost the feeling of a coming terror that had been over
us, the utmost peril being past. My father went to the after cabin now,
and though the poor children were bruised with the heavy rolling of the
ship as she came into the wind, they were all well save Havelok, and he
had fallen asleep in my mother’s arms at last.
With the turn of the tide, which came about three hours after midday,
the clouds broke, and slowly the land grew out of the mists until we
could see it plainly, though it was hardly higher than the sea that
broke over it in whirling masses of spindrift. By-and-by we could see
far-off hills beyond wide-stretching marshlands that looked green and
rich across yellow sandhills that fringed the shore. And from them we
were not a mile, and at their feet were such breakers as no ship might
win through, though, if we might wait until they were at rest, the
level sand was good for beaching at the neap tides. For we were well
into Humber mouth, and to the northward of us, across the yellow water,
was the long point of Spurn, and the ancient port of Ravenspur, with
its Roman jetties falling into decay under the careless hand of the
Saxon, under its shelter. There was no port on this southern side of
the Humber, though farther south was Tetney Haven and again Saltfleet,
to which my father had been, but neither in nor out of them might a
vessel get in a northeast gale.
I have said that this clearness came with the turn of the tide, and now
that began to flow strongly, setting in with the wind with more than
its wonted force, for the northwest shift of the gale had kept it from
falling, as it always will on this coast. That, of course, I learned
later, but it makes plain what happened next. Our anchor began to drag
with the weight of both tide and wind, and that was the uttermost of
our dread.
Slowly it tore through its holding, and as it were step by step at
first, and once we thought it stopped when we had paid out all the
cable. But wind and sea were too strong, and presently again we saw the
shore marks shifting, and we knew that there was no hope. The ship must
touch the ground sooner or later, and then the end would come with one
last struggle in the surf, and on shore was no man whose hand might be
stretched to drag a spent man to the land, if he won through. It would
have seemed less lonely had one watched us, but I did not know then
that no pity for the wrecked need be looked for from the marshmen of
the Lindsey shore. There was not so much as a fisher’s boat of wicker
and skins in sight on the sandhills, where one might have looked to see
some drawn up.
Now my father went to the cabin and told my mother that things were at
their worst, and she was very brave.
“If you are to die at this time, husband,” she said, “it is good that I
shall die with you. Better it is, as I think, than a sickness that
comes to one and leaves the other. But after that you will go to the
place of Odin, to Valhalla; but I whither?”
Then spoke little Withelm, ever thoughtful, and now not at all afraid.
“If Freya wants not a sailor’s wife who is willing to fight the waves
with Grim, my father, it will be strange.”
My mother was wont to say that this saying of the child’s did much to
cheer her at that time, but there is little place for a woman in the
old faiths. So she smiled at him, and that made him bold to speak of
what he had surely been thinking since the storm began.
“I suppose that Aegir is wroth because we made no sacrifice to him
before we set sail. I think that I would cast the altar stones to him,
that he may know that we meant to do so.”
This sounds a child’s thought only, and so it was; but it set my father
thinking, and in the end helped us out of trouble.
“I have heard,” my father said, “that men in our case have thrown
overboard the high-seat pillars, and have followed them to shore
safely. We have none, but the stones are more sacred yet. Overboard
they shall go, and as the boat with them goes through the surf we may
learn somewhat.”
With that he hastened on deck, and told the men what he would do; and
they thought it a good plan, as maybe they would have deemed anything
that seemed to call for help from the strong ones of the sea. So they
got the boat ready to launch over the quarter, and the four stones,
being uncovered since the Vikings took our cargo, were easily got on
deck, and they were placed in the bottom of the boat, and steadied
there with coils of fallen rigging, so that they could not shift. They
were just a fair load for the boat. Then my father cried for help to
the Asir, bidding Aegir take the altar as full sacrifice; and when we
had done so we waited for a chance as a long wave foamed past us, and
launched the boat fairly on its back, so that she seemed to fly from
our hands, and was far astern in a moment.
Now we looked to see her make straight for the breakers, lift on the
first of them, and then capsize. That first line was not a quarter of a
mile from us now.
But she never reached them. She plunged away at first, heading right
for the surf, and then went steadily westward, and up the shore line
outside it, until she was lost to sight among the wild waves, for she
was very low in the water.
“Cheer up, men,” my father said, as he saw that; “we are not ashore
yet, nor will be so long as the tide takes that current along shore. We
shall stop dragging directly.”
And so it was, for when the ship slowly came to the place where the
boat had changed her course, the anchor held once more for a while
until the gathering strength of the tide forced it to drag again. Now,
however, it was not toward the shore that we drifted, but up the
Humber, as the boat had gone; and as we went the sea became less heavy,
for we were getting into the lee of the Spurn headland.
Soon the clouds began to break, flying wildly overhead with patches of
blue sky and passing sunshine in between them that gladdened us. The
wind worked round to the eastward at the same time, and we knew that
the end of the gale had come. But, blowing as it did right into the
mouth of the river, the sea became more angry, and it would be worse
yet when the tide set again outwards. Already we had shipped more water
than was good, and we might not stand much more. It seemed best,
therefore, to my father that we should try to run as far up the Humber
as we might while we had the chance, for the current that held us safe
might change as tide altered in force and depth.
So we buoyed the cable, not being able to get the anchor in this sea,
and then stepped the yard in the mast’s place, and hoisted the peak of
the sail corner-wise as best we might; and that was enough to heel us
almost gunwale under as the cable was slipped and the ship headed about
up the river mouth. We shipped one or two more heavy seas as she paid
off before the wind, but we were on the watch for them, and no harm was
done.
After that the worst was past, for every mile we flew over brought us
into safer waters; and now we began to wonder where the boat with its
strange cargo had gone, and we looked out for her along the shore as we
sailed, and at last saw her, though it was a wonder that we did so.
The tide had set her into a little creek that opened out suddenly, and
there Arngeir saw her first, aground on a sandbank, with the lift of
each wave that crept into the haven she had found sending her higher on
it. And my father cried to us that we had best follow her; and he put
the helm over, while we sheeted home and stood by for the shock of
grounding.
Then in a few minutes we were in a smother of foam across a little sand
bar, and after that in quiet water, and the sorely-tried ship was safe.
She took the ground gently enough in the little creek, not ten score
paces from where the boat was lying, and we were but an arrow flight
from the shore. As the tide rose the ship drifted inward toward it, so
that we had to wait only for the ebb that we might go dry shod to the
land.
Before that time came there was rest for us all, and we needed it
sorely. It was a wonder that none of the children had been hurt in the
wild tossing of the ship, but children come safely through things that
would be hard on a man. Bruised they were and very hungry, but somehow
my mother had managed to steady them on the cabin floor, and they were
none the worse, only Havelok slept even yet with a sleep that was too
heavy to be broken by the worst of the tossing as he lay in my mother’s
lap. She could not tell if this heavy sleep was good or not.
Then we saw to the wounded men, and thereafter slept in the sun or in
the fore cabin as each chose, leaving Arngeir only on watch. It was
possible that the shore folk would be down to the strand soon, seeking
for what the waves might have sent them, and the tide must be watched
also.
Just before its turn he woke us, for it was needful that we should get
a line ashore to prevent the ship from going out with the ebb, and with
one I swam ashore. There was not so much as a stump to which to make
fast, and so one of the men followed me, and we went to the boat, set
the altar stones carefully ashore, then fetched the spare anchor, and
moored her with that in a place where the water seemed deep to the
bank.
It was a bad place. For when the tide fell, which it did very fast, we
found that we had put her on a ledge. Presently therefore, and while we
were trying to bail out the water that was in her, the ship took the
ground aft, and we could not move her before the worst happened.
Swiftly the tide left her, and her long keel bent and twisted, and her
planks gaped with the strain of her own weight, all the greater for the
water yet in her that flowed to the hanging bows. The good ship might
sail no more. Her back was broken.
That was the only time that I have ever seen my father weep. But as the
stout timbers cracked and groaned under the strain it seemed to him as
if the ship that he loved was calling piteously to him for help that he
could not give, and it was too much for him. The gale that was yet
raging overhead and the sea that was still terrible in the wide waters
of the river had been things that had not moved him, for that the ship
should break up in a last struggle with them was, as it were, a fitting
end for her. But that by his fault here in the hardly-won haven she
should meet her end was not to be borne, and he turned away from us and
wept.
Then came my mother and set her hand on his shoulder and spoke softly
to him with wise words.
“Husband, but a little while ago it would have been wonderful if there
were one of us left alive, or one plank of the ship on another. And now
we are all safe and unhurt, and the loss of the ship is the least of
ills that might have been.”
“Nay, wife,” he said; “you cannot understand.”
“Then it is woe for the—for the one who is with us. But how had it been
if you had seen Hodulf and his men round our house, and all the
children slain that one might not escape, while on the roof crowed the
red cock, and naught was left to us? We have lost less than if we had
stayed for that, and we have gained what we sought, even safety. See,
to the shore have come the ancient holy things of our house, and that
not by your guidance. Surely here shall be the place for us that is
best.”
“Ay, wife; you are right in all these things, but it is not for them.”
Then she laughed a little, forcing herself to do so, as it seemed.
“Why, then, it is for the ship that I was ever jealous of, for she took
you away from me. Now I think that I should be glad that she can do so
no more. But I am not, for well I know what the trouble must be, and I
would have you think no more of it. The good ship has saved us all, and
so her work is done, and well done. Never, if she sailed many a long
sea mile with you, would anything be worth telling of her besides this.
And the burden of common things would surely be all unmeet for her
after what she has borne hither.”
“It is well said, Leva, my wife,” my father answered.
From that time he was cheerful, and told us how it was certain that we
had been brought here for good, seeing that the Norns[7] must have led
the stones to the haven, so that this must be the place that we sought.