How like a younker, or a prodigal,
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay,
Hugged and embraced by the wanton wind.
How like the prodigal doth she return,
With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails.
Lean, rent, and beggared by the wanton wind.
_Merchant of Venice._
Next morning the deck of the Ideal was all activity.
A strong northeasterly wind had sprung up, so that by a rare chance they
were able to sail up the current instead of employing a tug. Only the
paid hands and one or two others were on deck as they struggled up the
stream till near Clayton. Here the channels opened out, the current
seemed to ease up, and they got the wind continuously as she boiled up
to Kingston. The steward went ashore at the city, and there was a delay
while he was getting in more ice for the refrigerator, and poultry, and
other supplies. Then they went off again, flying before the wind, past
the wharves of Kingston toward Snake Island lying hull down and showing
nothing but its tree-tops.
Breakfast was very irregular that day--terribly so, the steward thought.
He was preparing breakfast at any and all times up to twelve o'clock,
and after that it was called luncheon. No troublesome bell awoke the
tired sleepers, no colored man came to take away their beds as on the
sleeping-cars. The dancers of the previous night tumbled up, more or
less thirsty, just when the spirit moved them, and, as all had a fair
quantum of sleep in this way, there were no bad tempers on board,
except--well, the steward knew enough to look pleasant.
It was a fine start they made. But it did not last long. During the
night the heavy water-laden atmosphere began to break up into low clouds
that went flying across the face of the moon, producing weird effects in
alternate light and darkness. They were soon close-hauled on a wind from
the southward, and before the port of Charlotte was reached they had a
long tussle with a stiff breeze from the west--topmast housed, two reefs
down, and the lee-scuppers busy.
At dawn, when they went into Charlotte, it was blowing a gale. Not a
Cape Horn gale, perhaps, but a good enough gale, and the water was
lively around the pier-heads. Several vessels could be seen up the lake,
running down to the harbor for shelter, and wallowing in the sea. So
they ran the yacht far up into the harbor between the piers, and made
fast as far away from the lake as they could get, to avoid being fouled
by incoming vessels, and to escape the heavy swell that found its way in
from outside. An hour after the sailing vessels had made the port the
mail-line steamer Eleusinian came yawing in, with some of her windows in
bad shape, and glad to get in out of the sea.
Next morning it was blowing harder than ever. Everything outside the
cabins was disagreeable. The water they floated in seemed to be
principally mud, and on land the mud seemed principally water. Some of
the adventurous waded through the mire to see the works for smelting
iron in the neighborhood. But the only thing resembling fun outside the
boat was trying to walk on the piers. Two figures, to which yellow
oilskin suits lent their usual grace, would support a third figure, clad
in a long water-proof, resembling a sausage. These three would make a
dash through the wind and seize a tall post or a spile for mooring
vessels, and here they would pause, hold on, and recover their lost
breath. Then, slanting into the wind, they would make a sort of tack,
partly to windward, till they reached the next spile, and so on, while
occasionally they would be deluged with the top of a wave. The fun of
this consisted in the endeavor to avoid being blown into the water.
Certainly the sausage could not have gone alone. After several hours in
the cabin the element of change in this exercise made it quite a
pastime. It cooled the blood and took away the fidgets, and, on
returning, made the cabins seem a pleasant shelter instead of a prison.
So far there had been no chance to leave the harbor for the purpose of
reaching Toronto. The wind was dead ahead from that quarter. Young
Dusenall was watching the weather continually, very anxious to get away
to be in time for the yacht race there on the 7th and 8th. He was over
at the steamboat hobnobbing with the captain of the Eleusinian, who was
also anxious to get on with his vessel. What with whisky and water,
nautical magic, and one thing or another between the two of them they
got the wind to go down suddenly about five o'clock that evening.
Charley came back in high good-humor. The captain had offered to tow the
Ideal behind the steamer to Toronto, and nothing but a long, rolling
sea, with no wind to speak of, could be noticed outside.
Jack did not like going to sea hitched up, Mazeppa-like, to a steamer,
and he had misgivings as to the weather. The leaden-colored clouds,
banked up in the west, were moving slowly down the lake like herded
elephants. They did not yet look pacific, and he feared that they would
make another stampede before the night was over. He declared it was only
looking for another place to blow from. Charley answered that the race
came off on the day after to-morrow, and, as they had to get to Toronto
somehow, why not behind the steamer? As Jack was unable to do any more
than say what he thought, he suggested "that, if the boat must go out in
this sort of way during bad weather, that the women had better take the
train home." The trip in the yacht promised to be unpleasant, but when
Mrs. Dusenall considered the long, dusty, and hot journey around the
western end of the lake she decided to "stick to the ship."
At seven o'clock in the evening they were flying out of port behind the
steamer at the end of a long hawser. A heavy dead swell was rolling
outside, and the way the Ideal got jerked from one wave to another boded
ill for the comfort of the passage. Charley hung on, however, thinking
that this was the worst of it and that the sea would go down.
The night grew very dark, and two hours afterward the gale commenced
again, and blew harder than before from the same quarter. Every time
they plunged hard into a wave the decks would be swept from stem to
stern, while a blinding spray covered everything. If they had cast off
at this time they could have sailed back to Charlotte in safety, but
Charley was bound to see Toronto, and held on.
Suddenly, in the wildness of the night, they heard a crack of breaking
timber, and the next moment the tall mast whipped back toward the stern
like a bending reed. A few anxious moments passed before those aft could
find out what had happened. In the darkness, and the further obscurity
caused by the flying water, the bowsprit had fouled the towline. The
bowstays had at once parted and, perhaps assisted by the recoil of the
mast, the bowsprit had snapped off, like a carrot, close to the stem.
This large piece of timber was now in the water, acting like a
battering-ram against the starboard bow, with the stowed staysail, and
all the head gear, attached to it. There was no use trying to clear away
the wreck by endeavoring to chop through all the wire rigging, chains,
forestays, bowsprit shrouds, bobstays, and running gear, all adrift in a
mass that would have taken a long time to cut away or disentangle, even
in daylight and calm water. Besides this, one could not see his hand
held before his face, except by lantern-light, and such was the
unnatural pitching of the yacht that it was almost impossible to stand
without holding on to something. Charley, who was steering, asked of one
of the English hands, who was carefully crawling aft to take the wheel,
"How's everything forward?" To Charley's mind the reply seemed to
epitomize things as the man touched his hat and answered respectfully,
"Gone to 'ell, sir." He spat on the watery deck, as he said this, while
a blast of wind and half a ton of water from the bows swept away so
effectually both the remark and the tobacco juice that Mr. Lemons could
not help absurdly thinking of the tears of Sterne's recording angel. The
sailor was very much disgusted at the condition of things, and both he
and his remark were so free from any appearance of timidity that the
Hon. M. T. Head felt like giving him five dollars. While on shore, the
honorable gentleman was accustomed to emphasize his language, but, in
the present crisis, no wild horses could have dragged from him a
questionable word.
Geoffrey's long arms and strength came in well that night. At the first
crack of the timber he slid out of his oil-skins for work, and his was
one of those cool heads that alone are of use at such a time. On a
sailing vessel the first effect of a bad accident in the night-time is
to paralyze thought. The danger and the damage are at first unknown. The
blackness of the night, the sounds of things smashing, the insecurity of
foothold, the screaming of the wind, and the tumbling of the waters, all
tend to kill that energy and concentration of thought which, to be
useful, must rise above these enervating influences.
Jack had had more experience than Geoffrey, and thus knew better what to
do. But Geoffrey, for his part, was "all there." When he was hanging
down over the side, and climbing about to get the floating, banging mass
of wreckage attached to the throat-halyards, the tops of the waves that
struck him were unable to wash him away, and when he had succeeded in
his efforts, the wreckage was hoisted bodily inboard.
The fellows at the wheel were momentarily expecting the mast to snap and
fall backward on their heads, as there was now no forestay on it. The
worst fault of the sloop-rig here became apparent. Unlike cutters,
sloops have no forestay leading from the masthead down to the stem, but
one leading only to the outer end of the bowsprit, and when the bowsprit
carries away, as it frequently does, the mast then has nothing but its
own strength to save it from snapping in a sudden recoil.
What made the plunging of the mast worse was that the lower-mast
backstays had both carried away at the deck, as also had the topmast
backstays, after pulling the head off the housed topmast. All this heavy
wire rigging, with its blocks, immediately became lost to sight. It was
streaming out aft on the gale from the masthead, together with every
other line that had a chance to get adrift. If a halyard got loose from
its belaying pin that night it was not seen again. It said good-by to
the deck and went to join the flying mass overhead, that afterward by
degrees wound itself round and round the topping-lifts and
peak-halyards, effectually preventing the hoisting of the mainsail. The
long and heavy main-boom, which had long since kicked its supporting
crutch overboard, was now lowered down to rest on the cabin-top, so as
to take the weight off the mast; and while the end of it dragged in the
boiling caldron behind the counter, the middle part of it rose and fell
with every pitch, in spite of endeavors to lash it down, until it seemed
that the cabin-top would certainly give way. Had the top caved in, the
chances of swamping were good.
Their power to sail by means of the canvas was now virtually gone.
Nothing was left for them but to follow the huge "smoke-grinding" mass
that yawed and pitched in front of them. One or two men were kept at the
stern of the steamer during this part of the night, to report any
signals of distress and to aid the yacht's steering by showing bright
lights. Near to these bright lights the figure of the captain could be
seen from time to time through the night, anxiously watching the lights
on the yacht, which told him that she still survived. Sometimes he was
apparently calling out to those on the yacht, but of course no sound
could be heard.
The ladies were in their cabins all this time, sorry enough that they
had not taken the railway home.
When the mast was stayed forward, by setting up the staysail-halyards,
etc., at the stem, there was nothing to do on deck but steer and keep
watch, and as nearly everything had been carried away except the whale
boat, Geoffrey went below for dry clothes and, feeling tired with his
hard work, took a nap in one of the bunks in the after-cabin. As the
sailors say, he "turned in all standing"--that is, with his clothes on.
The other men remained on deck. Most of them were drenched to the skin
and were becoming gradually colder in the driving spray and heavy
swashes of solid wave that swept the decks with clock-like regularity.
They thought it better to remain where they could at least swim for a
while if the yacht went down, and they preferred exposure to the idea of
being drowned like rats in the cabin.
After some time Geoffrey awoke, feeling that a soft warm hand was being
passed around his chin. He knew it was Margaret before he got his eyes
open. He peered at her for a moment without raising his head. She was
sitting on the seat outside, looking very despairing.
"Oh, Geoffrey," she said, "I think we are going to the bottom."
Geoffrey listened, with his eyes shut, and heard both pumps clanging
outside. Margaret thought he was going off to sleep again. She was very
frightened, and the fear seemed to draw her toward Geoffrey all the more
for protection. She put her hand half around his neck and urged him to
wake up.
"Oh, how can you go on sleeping at such a time? Do wake up, dear
Geoffrey. I tell you the yacht is sinking. We are all going to the
bottom. Do get up!"
Geoffrey was perfectly wide awake, but this was even pleasanter than
being waked by music, and her hand on his chin seemed like a caress.
With his eyes shut, he reproached her sleepily: "No, no, don't make me
get up. I like it. I like going to the bottom."
Margaret smiled through her fears. "But, Geoffrey, do look here! The
water has risen up over the cabin floor."
He got up then. Certainly, things did seem a little threatening. A
couple of corks were dancing about in the water upon the carpet quite
merrily. This meant a good deal. He heard that peculiar sound of rushing
water inside the boat which can be easily recognized when once heard.
Above the howling of wind and swash of waves, both pumps could be heard
working for all they were worth. The vessel was pitching terribly,
mercilessly dragged as she was from one wave to another, without having
time to ride them.
Geoffrey thought the time for bailing with the pails might be deferred
for a while. Without Margaret's knowledge he stuck a pen-knife into the
woodwork near the floor to define high-water mark, and thus detect any
increase in the leakage over the pumps. Then he devoted some time toward
endeavoring to calm Margaret's fears, chiefly by exhibiting a masterly
inaction in regard to the leak and in searching about for a lost pipe.
By the time he had found it and was enjoying a quiet smoke, reclining on
the cushions to make the motion seem easier, her fears began to weaken.
She did not at all object to the smoke of pipes, and Geoffrey's comfort
became contagious. Although the clanging of the pumps outside recalled
stories of shipwreck, she was, on the other hand, more influenced by the
easy-going indifference that he assumed. Twenty minutes passed in this
way, and then she felt sure that the danger was not so great as she had
thought. Geoffrey in the mean time was covertly watching his pen-knife,
that marked the rise or fall of the water in the boat. At the end of
half an hour he could see, from where he lay, that half the blade of the
knife was covered with water. So he knocked the ashes out of his pipe
and said he would go and see the boys on deck, and that Margaret had
better go and comfort the others in the ladies' cabins, and tell them it
was all right.
When Margaret had staggered away, Geoffrey's manner was not that of one
satisfied with his surroundings. He ripped up the carpet and the planks
underneath to get at the well, and then skipped up the companion-way in
the liveliest manner. When on deck, he made out Jack at the wheel.
"How's the well?" Jack cried, in the wind. "Did you sound it?"
Geoffrey had to roar to make himself heard above the gale and noise of
waters.
"Get your buckets!" he said; and Jack passed his order forward by a
messenger, who crawled along by the main-boom carefully, lest he should
go overboard in the pitching.
"Why, the pumps were gaining on the leak a while ago!" Jack said to
Geoffrey. "Did you examine the well?"
"There is no well left that I could see. It's all a lake on the cabin
floor. The leak gained on the pumps an inch in half an hour! I waited
and watched to make sure, and to quiet the women."
"Then it is only a question of time," said Jack. "The buckets and pumps
won't keep her afloat long. She is working the caulking out of her
seams, and that will get worse every moment."
There were no loiterers on board after that. They all "turned to" and
worked like machines. Even the steward and cook were on deck to take
their trick at the pumps. Five men in soaking trousers and shirts worked
five buckets in the cabin, heaving the water out of the companion-way.
Of these five, some dropped out from time to time exhausted, but the
others relieved them, and so kept the five buckets going as fast as they
could be worked. Some fell deadly sick with the heat, hard work, and
terrible pitching and driving motion of the boat, but nobody said a
word. If a man fell sick, he had something else to think of than his
comfort, and he staggered around as well as he could. From the
companion-way to the well, and from the well to the companion-way, for
two hours more they kept up the incessant toil. At first some had
attempted to be pleasant by saying it was easy to get water enough for
the whisky, and by making other light remarks. But now it was changed.
They said nothing on the exhausting and dreary round, but worked with
their teeth clinched--while the sweat poured off them as if they, too,
had started every seam and were leaking out their very lives.
Still the pitiless great mass of a steamer in front of the yacht plunged
and yawed and dragged them without mercy through the black waters, where
a huge surge could now be occasionally discerned sweeping its foaming
crest past the little yacht, which was gradually succumbing to the wild
forces about it.
Margaret was back again in the cabin now. She had wedged herself in,
with her back against the bunks, and one foot up against the table as a
prop to keep her in position. In one hand she held a bottle of brandy
and in the other a glass. And when a man fell out sick and exhausted she
attended to him. There was no water asked for. They took the brandy
"neat." She had succeeded in quieting the other women, and as they could
not hear the bailing in the after-cabin they were in happy ignorance of
the worst. Whatever fears she had had when the knowledge of danger first
came to her, she showed no sign of them now--but only a compassion for
the exhausted workers that heartened them up and did them good.
A third hour had nearly expired since they began to use the buckets, and
Margaret for a long time had been watching the water, in which the
bailers worked, gradually creeping up over their feet as they spent
themselves on a dreary round, to which the toil of Sisyphus was
satisfactory. The water was rising steadily in spite of their best
efforts to keep the boat afloat. Margaret had quietly made up her mind
that they would never see the land again. There did not seem to be any
chance left, and she was going, as men say, to "die game." Her courage
and cheering words inspired the others to endless exertions. She was
like a big sister to them all. At times she was hilarious and almost
boisterous, and when she waved the bottle in the air and declared that
there was no Scott Act on board, her conduct can not be defended.
Maurice Rankin tried to say he wished they could get a Scott Act on the
water, but the remark seemed to lack intrinsic energy, and he failed
from exhaustion to utter it.
Another half-hour passed, and while the men trudged through the
ever-deepening water Margaret experienced new thoughts whenever she
gazed at Geoffrey, who had worked almost incessantly. She looked at the
knotted cords on his arms and on his forehead, at the long tenacious jaw
set as she had seen it in the hurdle race, and she knew from the
swelling nostril and glittering eye that the idea of defeat in this
battle with the waters was one which he spurned from him. His clothes
were dripping with water. The neck-button of his shirt had carried away,
his trousers were rolled up at the bottom, and his face perspired freely
with the extraordinary strain, and yet in spite of his appearance she
felt as if she had never cared for him so much as when she now saw him.
On through the night she sat there doing her woman's part beside those
who fought with the water for their lives. She saw the treacherous enemy
gaining on them in spite of all their efforts, and in her heart felt
fully convinced that she could not have more than two hours to live.
The hot steam from men working frantically filled the cabin, the weaker
ones grew ill before her, and she looked after them without blenching.
Hers was no place for a toy woman. She was there to help all those about
to die; and to do this rightly, to force back her own nausea, and face
anxiety and death with a smile.
As for Geoffrey, life seemed sweet to him that night. For him, it was
Margaret or--nothing. To him, this facing of death did just one thing.
It raised the tiger in him. He had what Shakespeare and prize-fighters
call "gall," that indomitable courage which women worship hereditarily,
although better kinds of courage may exist.
Another long half-hour passed, and then Maurice fell over his bucket,
keel-up. He had fainted from exhaustion, and was dosed by Margaret in
the usual way, and after this he was set on his pins and sent on deck
for the lighter work at the pumps. After that, the paid hands, having in
some way purloined too much whisky, mutinied, and said they would be
blanketty-blanketted if they would sling another bucket.
The others went on as steadily as before, while the crew went forward to
wait sulkily for the end.
Jack and Charley then consulted as to what was best to be done. To hold
on in this way meant going to the bottom, without a shadow of doubt.
They had tried to signal to the steamer, to get her to slow up and take
all hands on board. But the watchers at the stern of the steamer had
been taken off to work at the steamer's pumps; for, as was afterward
found, she also was leaking badly and in a dangerous condition.
Ought they to cut the towline, throw out the inside ballast, and cut
away the mast to ease the straining at the seams? The wooden hull, minus
the inside ballast, might float in spite of the lead on the keel, which
was not very heavy, and in this way they might drift about until picked
up the next day. But the ballast was covered with water. They could not
get it out in time to save her. Yet the seas seemed somewhat lighter
than they had been. Would not the boat leak less while proceeding in an
ordinary way, instead of being dragged from wave to wave? No doubt it
would, but was it safe to let the steamer leave them? Ought they to cut
the towline, get up a bit of a sail, and endeavor to make the north
shore of the lake?
While duly weighing these things, Jack was making a rough calculation in
his head, as he took a look at the clock. Then he walked forward, took a
halyard in his hands, and embracing the plunging mast with his legs, he
swarmed up about twenty feet from the deck. Then, after a long look, he
suddenly slid down again, and running aft he called to the others, while
he pointed over the bows.
"Toronto Light, ahoy!"
"Holy sailor!" cried Charley in delight. "Are you sure of it?"
"Betcherlife!" said Jack. "Can't fool me on Toronto Light. Go and see
for yourself."
Charley climbed up and took a look. Then he went down into the
forecastle and told the men they would get no pay for the trip if they
did not help to bail the boat.
Seeing that not only life but good pay awaited them, they turned to
again and helped to keep the ship afloat.
In a few minutes more Jack called to Margaret to come on deck. When she
had ascended, she sat on the dripping cabin-top and watched a changing
scene, impossible to forget. Soon after she appeared, there came a
flicker in the air, as short as the pulling of a trigger, and all at
once she perceived that she began dimly to see the waves and the
pitching boat. It was like a revelation, like an experience of Dante's
Virgil, to see at last some of that hell of waters in which they had
struggled so long for existence.
As the first beginning of weird light, coming apparently from nowhere,
began to spread over the weary waste of heaving, tumbling, merciless
waters and to dilute the ink of the night, as if with only a memory of
day, a momentary chill went through Margaret, as she began to realize a
small part of what they had come through. But as the ragged sky in the
east paled faintly, rather than warmed, with an attempt at cheerfulness,
like the tired smile of a dying man, it sufficed, although so deficient
in warmth, to cheer her heart. The calm certainty of an almost immediate
death that had settled like a pall upon her was dispelled by rays of
hope that seemed to be identical with the invading rays of light. "Hope
comes from the east," she thought, as a ray from that quarter made the
atmosphere take another jump toward day, and as she fell into a tired
reverie she remembered, with a heart forced toward thanksgiving, those
other early glad tidings from the East. Worn out, she yielded to early
emotions, and thanked God for her deliverance. She arose and went
carefully along the deck, holding to the wet boom, until she reached the
mast, where she stopped and gazed at the black mass of the great steamer
still plunging and yawing and swinging through the waters, with its
lights looking yellow in the pale glimmer of dawn. After viewing the
disorder on decks she could form an idea of the work the men had had
during the darkness of the night.
But, oh, what a broken-nosed nightmare of a yacht it was, in the dreary
morning light, with all the dripping black-looking heap of wreckage
piled over the bows, the mast pitching back toward the stern with a
tangled mass of everything imaginable wound in a huge plait down the
lifts. In this draggle-tailed thing, with a boom lying on deck and
hanging over the counter and its canvas trailing in the water, Margaret
could not recognize the peerless swan that a short time ago poised
itself upon its pinions and swept so majestically out of Toronto Bay.
The water, at every mile traversed, now grew calmer as the gale came
partly off the land. Soon the pitching ended altogether. The opened
seams ceased to smile so invitingly to the death that lurks under every
boat's keel. The pumps and buckets had begun to gain upon the water in
the cabin, and by the time they had swept round the lighthouse and
reached the wharf the flooring had been replaced, while the pumps were
still clanging at intervals.
When they made fast to the dock a drawn and haggard group of men--a
drooping, speechless, and even ragged group of men--allowed themselves
to sleep. It did not matter where or how they slept. They just dropped
anywhere; and for five hours Nature had all she could do to restore
these men to a semblance of themselves.
[Note.--If Captain Estes, of the Mail Line Steamer Abyssinian,
should ever read this chapter, he will know a part of what took
place at the other end of the hawser on the night of September
5, 1872.]