With all sail stripped off her and a tarpaulin lashed in the weather
jigger rigging, the grey daylight revealed the _Kelvinhaugh_ lying
hove-to in a sea which words fail to describe. It was a veritable
battle of the elements--wind and ocean wrestling for the mastery--and
the unfortunate barque was in the "No Man's Land" of contending
forces.
The crew were huddled in their swaying bunks absolutely exhausted in
body and spirits. They had put in a desperate period from midnight to
dawn, and they felt that another such ordeal was beyond their powers
of strength and endurance. They were ready to give up and let the ship
go where sea and wind listed, and even Nickerson, driver that he was,
could get no more effort out of them. Hour after hour throughout the
night they reefed and hauled sail off the barque, and eventually
hove-to under fore and main lower topsails. When the main-topsail
split in a frightful gust, they stowed the remaining canvas as best
they could, and set a staysail of storm fabric. When this small patch
burst, they unrolled a tarpaulin hatch-cover in the jigger rigging and
seized it there to keep her head up to the mountainous sea.
"Ef she was only a real ship...." growled Nickerson disgustedly, but
she wasn't. She was the _Kelvinhaugh_--a cheap product of slack times
in Clyde shipyards; a stock article for sale at a cheap price, ugly,
ill-designed, ill-equipped, over-loaded and under-manned. Her crew
knew it that day, and hove-to, their master allowed them to turn in
all-standing, and recuperate for the next call to battle. No look-out
was kept--there was but little use for a lookout with the ship not
under command--and only McLean, tending the lashed wheel, and
Nickerson, tenanted the spray and rain-drenched poop. These two
men--thorough seamen both--communed together, exchanging weather-lore
and experiences and planning to beat the fierce west wind of the
"Roaring Fifties" with a ship that was not designed or fabricated or
laden to do what ships are called upon to do in the wind-hounded seas
of the high latitudes.
The Nova Scotian, oil-skinned and sea-booted, his lean face reddened
by the wind and his keen grey eyes peering forth from swollen lids,
came out from the shelter of the cabin companionway and squinted to
the south'ard. "I think, McLean, it's haulin' southerly a mite!" he
remarked in a voice harsh with much shouting.
McLean rolled up his sou'wester thatch with a mittened hand and
glanced around--sniffing the air like a hound. "Yes, sir, I b'lieve it
is. It's clearin' a bit to the west'ard, sir. There's a wee bit break
yonder."
Sagging off to loo'ard, the big barque rolled and plunged ponderously
in the swing of the big Horn seas which, ever and anon, swashed over
the rails and filled the decks until the clanging wash-ports drained
the boarding brine away. Her four heavy masts, denuded of canvas,
described wild arcs across the grey skies, while the wind shrieked and
thrummed in halliards and wire stays, and clanking chains and chafing
parrals added their notes to the general pandemonium. The running gear
blew out in great curves to loo'ard and the ends of the halliards,
washed off the belaying pins, floated across the swashing decks in an
inextricable tangle of snakey coils, or trailed overboard through the
ports. In the lee of the houses or the tarpaulin in the jigger
rigging, the two men swayed their bodies to the violent lurches, both
watching for the hoped-for signs. McLean read them by sea-lore and
sailorly instinct alone--the skipper combining these qualities with
more scientific forecasts in squints at barometer and compass.
After an hour, Nickerson rubbed his hands together and swung his arms.
He laughed--a hoarse, crow-like chuckle--and remarked to the bos'n,
huddled in his oilskins and standing alternately on one foot to ease
numb toes, "She's shifting, my bully. We'll get our slant this time, I
cal'late. Sing out to the stoo'ard to give us a mug-up of coffee and
bite here, and then we'll rouse out the hands and get the muslin on
her."
Thompson appeared while they were quaffing the hot brew. "Captain," he
said, "Hinkel wants to see you. He thinks he's dying." The skipper
smiled saturninely. "I'll look him up in a spell. He won't cash in his
chips yet awhile. I cal'late I hev time to finish my coffee an' cake
afore he pegs aout, eh?"
A few minutes later he went into the berth where Hinkel was lying.
Earlier in the morning he had examined him, and finding only a broken
collar bone and a number of bruises, he had set the bone as well as he
could and left him to the care of the Cockney steward. "Well, what's
ailin' ye?" he asked harshly.
"Do ju t'ink I'm goink fur to die, kaptan?" He asked the question
apprehensively.
Nickerson looked at the German shrewdly. "Naow, I ain't sure but what
you might slip your cable. I can't tell what ails ye altogether. Ye
might be injured internally. A man don't fall sixty feet or so an'
land on a hard deck-house an' git away with a cut finger. No, siree!
One o' yer ribs might ha' busted an' pierced a lung an' ye'd bleed to
death internally. Hev ye any pain thereabouts?"
"Yaw, kaptan, I have dot pain in dot place und I t'ink ju right
maybe." His owlish German face screwed up in an expression of pain as
the rolling of the ship racked his injured body. He showed fear in his
eyes--fear of death--and he spoke hoarsely and rapidly. "Kaptan! I ju
musdt dell somedings! Ju lisden blease!"
When the skipper left Hinkel's room, he had a curious expression upon
his hard young visage. "Miserable sculpin!" he muttered. "It would be
a damned good thing if he did die!" On deck again, McLean enquired
respectfully, "Wull the Dutchman pull through, sir?"
"Aye, he won't die," came the reply. "Not much the matter with him but
sheer funk, I cal'late. We'll have to board him until we strike port,
and he'll be no more use to us than the Dutchman's anchor what was
left on the dock." Then with a squint at the compass and a glance to
windward, he continued, "Rouse the hands aout, McLean, an' git th'
tops'ls on her! This hellion of a wind is comin' away fair for a slant
an' we've got to make the best of it!" And he stamped his feet on the
slushy deck and chuckled.
And they made the best of it! With a southing wind blowing stiff from
the icy Antarctic wastes, they "put it to her!" as the sailors say,
and sail after sail was cast loose, sheeted home, and yards mastheaded
to the chorus of rousing chanteys. The crew, unkempt and unwashed,
weary, wet and bruised, but rejuvenated with the thought of getting
under way again to the west'ard, worked and chanteyed with a
will--tugging and heaving on sloshing, rolling decks and blessing "old
bully-be-damned" aft for raising a breeze which would speed them from
these accursed latitudes. Let him pile the rags on! They would stand
the racket, by Jupiter! No sail-carrying, no cracking-on, could
affright them now after what they had gone through. They had plumbed
the depths of uttermost misery. Six sanguinary weeks and three gory
days banging around the back door of Tophet in a perishing,
misbegotten, barnacle-bottomed barge of a ruddy work-house misnamed a
barque; reefing and fisting sail in hail-squalls and sleety gales,
bursting their hearts out on heavy gear and being drenched in chilly
water and washed violently along and across the decks, and enduring
all this for a measly pittance--they had had enough of it. Drive her
or drift her! but get her away from Cape Stiff, the grey skies, the
snow, frost, ice, gales, albatrosses and mollyhawks, and they would be
thankful for small mercies.
Captain Nickerson paced the swaying poop smoking his pipe. Two men
were at the wheel--skilled hands for lee and weather spokes. Thompson
was for'ard and Martin flitted along the bridge from poop to
fo'c'sle-head. The foresail and upper and lower tops'ls had been set
and the barque was beginning to storm ahead under the urge of the wind
in their woven fabric. "Give her th' main t'gallan's'l, mister,"
commanded the Old Man, and when the sail was sheeted home and the yard
hoisted, he studied the straining canvas and spoke again. "Set the
fore an' mizzen t'gallan's'ls, mister. She'll lug them. What she won't
carry, she can drag!"
Under this canvas the _Kelvinhaugh_ stormed along, headed nor'west by
west magnetic, and with the bitter gale over the port quarter hounding
her through the huge grey-green seas which, in this latitude, sweep
around the world.
The men, after setting the topgallantsails, dived into the fo'c'sle
for a warm-up and a lay-back. The barque was driving the sprays as
high as her lower mast-heads and the gear began to freeze up in the
chill of the wind from off the Antarctic ice. But they didn't care.
She was making westing, and the Olympian Bluenose aft was driving his
wind-harried steed up into fairer and warmer latitudes. The
_Kelvinhaugh_, built by the mile and cut off by the yard as she was,
wriggled her long body through the sea, and her blunt bows shouldered
the east-bound combers and she staggered to their tremendous impact.
The great Cape Horn "greybeards" roared past, seeming to say: "We'll
give you a chance now you poor devil!" when the barque would give a
swaggering lift to her bows like a woman tossing her head, and she
would seem to retort insolently: "The deuce you will!" as she elbowed
a small half-surge out of the way. Then up would come a big brother
comber, racing and roaring in the wake of the little fellow, and the
ship, conceited in the irresistible weight of four thousand tons of
hull, spars and cargo, would try the same tactics. Crash!
Burr-r-roomb! a halt, a stagger, a thunderous roar as of a cataract,
and a slow lifting as tons of chilly brine swirled through the
clanging scupper-ports, and the big fellow would speed on his
easterly run to Australia, hissing a warning--"Go easy, you silly
trollop, or we'll smash you, stave you, rip and rend you, and plunge
you down to roost on the splintered pinnacles three hundred fathoms
below!"
Nickerson slapped the weather poop rail with his hand. "Go it, you
scow! Travel naow an' let's see what ye kin do. You've a hundred an'
seventy-five miles to make to Diego Ramirez, so slog along, you big
ugly plug, slog along!" And to Donald, "standing-by" on the lee-side
of the poop, he grinned, "Heave the log, son!"
The hands for'ard had an eye on the poop. "What's he doin'?" queried
someone--"he," of course, meant Nickerson.
"They're heavin' th' log," came the reply from an observer.
"Humph," grunted a fo'c'sle oracle. "Bet he'll be singin' out for th'
ruddy main-r'yal in a minute!"
McKenzie, Jenkins and an ordinary seaman had finished their speed
recording task and were reeling in the line. "What's she makin'?"
asked the Old Man.
"Ten and a half, sir!"
Nickerson nodded. "Ornery old barge," he grunted, "an' this is her
best point o' sailing." Then to Thompson, "Mister! Give her th'
main-r'yal!"
The fo'c'sle observer qualified as a long-distance lip-reader. "He's
told young Thompson to give her th' main-r'yal. Spit on yer hands,
lads, an' limber yer j'ints for a pull at sheets 'n halliards--"
Thompson had run along the bridge and his voice interrupted the
prophet's observations, "Main-royal, men! Lively now!"
Moore was sent aloft to cast the gaskets adrift, and on deck the crew
sheeted home and mast-headed the yard to "_A Yankee ship came down
the river_," and they chorused and hauled the sheets to the
t'gallantyard-arms and yanked the yard up ere Moore was off it. Soloed
the chanteyman:--
"_Were you ever in Congo River?_"