*BOOK II.*
*CHAPTER I.*
*JANUARY IN THE NORTH SEA!*
A bitter morning, with light, powdery snow spotting here and there a
livid background; grey seas travelling fast, and a looming snow-cloud
gradually drooping down. The gulls are mad with hunger, and a cloud of
them skirl harshly over the taffrail of a stout smack that forges fast
through the bleak sea. The smack is coated with ice from the masthead to
the water's edge; there is not much of a sea, but when a wave does throw
a jet of water over the craft it freezes like magic, and adds yet
another layer to a heap which is making the deck resemble a miniature
glacier.
The smack has a flag hoisted, but alas! the signal that should float
bravely is twisted into a shabby icicle, and it would be lowered but for
the fact that the halliards will not run through the lump of ice that
gathers from the truck to the mast-head. All round to the near horizon
a scattered fleet of snow-white smacks are lingering, and they look like
a weird squadron from a land of chilly death. On the deck of the smack
that has the flag a powerful young man is standing, and by his side--by
all that is astounding--is an enormous man with an enormous beard and a
voice that booms through the Arctic stillness. That is our new scene.
* * * * *
I am not going to play at mystery, for you know as well as I do that the
young man named in that gloomy overture was Lewis Ferrier, and that his
companion was good Tom Lennard;--though what brought the giant out into
the frozen desolation I shall not say just yet.
Yes, Lewis kept his word, and at the time of which we are speaking he
had been three weeks at work on the Bank. He had now three cloth coats
on over his under-wear, and, over all, a leather coat made at Cronstadt,
and redolent of Russia even after weeks of hard wear. With all this he
could not do much more than keep warm. Tom was equipped in similar
fashion, and both men wore that air of stoical cheerfulness which marks
our maligned race, and which tells of the spirit that has sent our
people as masters over all the earth.
"Let's come down and have coffee with the men, Tom. I'm going to have a
try at that Lowestoft smack if the snow only keeps away."
"Right, my adventurer; I'm with you. But I'm not going to let you run
any more risks of that life of yours, my bold mariner. Hah! I'm here
to take care of you, and you've got to be very meek, or I'll set up an
opposition shop. Don't you think I can? Didn't I do up that skipper's
arm in his sling after you took off his finger? Eh! Beware of a rival.
Ah-h!"
"Yes, Thomas, but if you administer turpentine for pleurisy, as you did
to the big Yarmouth fellow, we shall have to turn on a special coroner
to attend on you."
"My good what's-his-name?--Admirable Hitchin--ah-h Admirable Crichton!
that child of Nature took the turpentine of his own accord. I left it
with orders that the application should be external, and it was to be
rubbed in until we got back with the emulsion and the proper liniment;
he tastes it, and finds it hot; he swallows the lot by degrees, and he
doesn't die--he gets well. How am I to blame! I take credit for a
magnificent cure, sir. If you say two words, I'll advertise Lennard's
miraculous emulsion in every journal in town when we get back."
"Coffee, skipper, coffee. The shipwrecked mariners demand refreshment,"
boomed Thomas.
Ah! that coffee! Thick, bitter-sweet, greasy with long stewing! What a
fluid it is--or rather what a solid! Its insolent stodginess has only a
surface resemblance to a fluid; yet it is a comfort on snowy mornings,
and our wanderers took to it kindly.
Lewis had laid himself out to be merry, and several grinning faces
peered from the bunks with kindly welcome as he took his seat on a
rickety fish-box. The skipper asked, "Shall the steward fetch your
bread in here, sir? You can't manage ours."
"All right. How are the men aft?"
"The young fellow from the _Achilles_ was jabbering a bit again. By the
way, you knew Tom Betts had come away in the old _Achilles_, didn't you,
sir?"
"What Tom Betts? Oh yes. Man with concussion of the brain, wasn't it?"
"So I heerd, sir. He told everybody at home how you saved him, and when
he said how he thought he'd gone to heaven he set all the women in the
Mission Hall a-pipin' of their eye. He's on the Lord's side now, sir.
You done that."
"Well, I'm a queer customer to do anything of the kind, skipper. I'm
only glad I got him sewed up soon enough, but my business ends there."
"You're jest as good as some as makes a frap about bein' good. I think,
sir, you put's on some of that light-come-go-away kind of a game."
"Never mind; we'll only hope we'll have no more cases like that exactly.
I don't know how we should have managed if there had been such another
last week."
"That was a strongish sea, and we're sure of more."
You never can get a North Sea man to own that any weather is very bad.
Years after a really bad gale he may give the wind credit for being in
earnest, but usually he talks in a patronizing way of the elements,
using diminutives, and trying to make light of the trouble so long as it
lasts. There had been hard weather since Lewis came out, and, though he
had ample stores and appliances now, he found that he was hampered by
the limitations of space as he was on board the schooner. Life had been
very rough for the young fellow and his burly worshipper since they came
out, and they only kept each other up by a mutual sham of the most
elaborate character. After breakfast, Lewis gave orders to run as close
as might be safe to the thick of the fleet; the smack was practically
under his command, and he took her where he thought he might be most
needed. One of his patients in the after-cabin was muttering uneasily,
for there was some feverishness; the other man had come down with a
crash on the icy deck, and the shock had apparently caused concussion of
the spine, for he could not move, and he was fed as if he were a child.
Lewis bent over the helpless seaman, and spoke kindly. The man sighed,
"Thank God I am where I am, sir. That long plaister begins to burn a
bit, but I a'most like it. There's little funny feelings runs down my
arms and legs."
"All right! You'll soon be better. Did you work all through the gale?"
"We was about for two nights and a day, sir, and every one of us with
the ulcers right up the arms. It was warm business, I can tell you,
sir. My ulcers are all going away now, with this warm cabin, but they
were throbbing all night before. When I come down such a crack I was
makin' a run for the taickle, for fear we might let the gear drop, and I
saw a flash in my eyes, and nothing more till I was aboard here."
"You were trawling when that breeze started?"
"Yes. We mustn't mind weather when the market's to be considered. Tell
me now, sir--you've got time, haven't you, sir? Talkin' of the market,
and I've been nearly dead, and not out o' the muck yet--does the people
know what us chaps gets for fish?"
"They never think. The fish comes, and the milk comes, and they pay the
fishmonger's bill and the milkman's, and they think one's the same as
the other, my man."
"Eh! I was thinkin' about a gentleman as came from this Mission vessel
aboard of us. He saw our twelve o'clock haul, and he says, 'Bad breeze
last night, my man. Did you work through it?' Well, there was nothing
much of a wind--just enough to make us reef her; so I answers, and he
says, 'I suppose this is your night's work. Now, what is your share?'
So I said my share would likely be tenpence. Well, he gives a reg'lar
screech; and then I reckoned up the price of all the lot as well as I
could guess, and he screeched again. 'Why,' says he, 'old Mother Baubo,
that keeps the shop in my district at home, would charge me eight
shillings for that turbot, four-and-six for that, eightpence for each of
those sixty haddocks, and nobody knows what for the rest.' Now, I've
thought of that gentleman and his screech many a time since, and when I
felt the light a-comin' to my eyes here, I thought again. Do you think
I shall die, sir? Excuse me."
"Die! No. Fact is, I'm too good-natured a doctor. I shall have to
stop you from talking. Die! We'll make a man of you, and send you on
board soon. Go on, I can stay another five minutes."
"Well, sir, when I thought of death, I thought what people would say if
they knew how much I got for risking this smash. That night I was over
the rail on to the trawl-beam twice; I was at the pumps an hour; I
pulled and hauled with both arms raw, and the snow freezing with the
salt as soon as it came on my ulcers, and then I got the smash. And all
for about eightpence. And that screeching gentleman told me as how his
Mother Baubo, as he calls her, drives a broom and two horses, or a horse
and two brooms--I'm mixed. No, 'twas a land-oh and two horses, and a
broom and one horse. And I gets eightpence for a-many hours and a
smash. I never mind the fellows that tells us on Sundays when we're
ashore to rise and assirk our rights or something, but there's a bit
wrong somewhere, sir. It don't seem the thing."
"Well, you see people would say you needn't be a fisherman; you weren't
forced to come."
"But I was, sir. I knew no more what I was coming to than a babe, and
once you're here, you stays here."
"Well, never mind for the present, my man. Why, you're a regular lawyer,
you rascal; I shall have to mind my p's and q's with you. Now don't talk
any more, or you'll fidget, and that won't do your back any good. Will
you have bread and milk, or beef-tea and toast, you luxurious person?
And I must be your valet."
"I don't know about vally, sir. It's vally enough for me. To think as
I should have a gentleman waitin' on me as if he was a cabin-boy!
Anything _you_ like, sir. The sight of you makes me better."
The man's tears were flowing; he was weak, poor fellow, and wanting in
the item of well-bred reticence. Lewis fed one patient, trimmed the
other's bed, put on a woollen helmet, sou'-wester, two pairs of gloves,
and the trusty Russian coat; then he was slung into the boat like a
bundle of clothes; landed springily on a thole, and departed over seas
not much bigger than an ordinary two-storey house. It was quite
moderate weather, and the sprightly young savant had lost that feeling
which makes you try to double yourself into knots when you watch a wave
gradually shutting away the outer world and preparing to fold its livid
gloom about you. "What would the Cowes fellows say to this, I wonder?"
thought the irreverent young pioneer. Then he chuckled over the thought
of the reckless Seadogs who march in nautical raiment on the pier.
Those wild, rollicking Seadogs! How the North Sea men would envy them
and their dower of dauntlessness! The Seadog takes his frugal lunch at
the club; he begins with a sole, and no doubt he casts a patronizing
thought towards the other Seadogs who trawled for the delicate fish.
They are not so like seamen in appearance as is the Cowes Seadog; they
do not wear shiny buttons; the polish on their boots is scarcely
brilliant; they wear unclean jumpers, and flannel trousers fit to make
an aesthetic Seadog faint with emotion of various sorts. No! they are
not pattern Seadogs at all--those North Sea workers. Would that they
could learn a lesson from the hardy Cowes Rover.
Well, the Rover tries a cutlet after his fish, then he has cheese and a
grape or two, and he tops up his frugal meal with a pint of British
Imperial. A shilling cigar brings his lunch up to just sixteen
shillings--as much as a North Sea amateur could earn in a week of
luck--and then he prepares to face the terrors of the Deep. Does he
tremble? Do the thoughts of the Past arise in his soul? Nay, the
Seadog of Cowes is no man to be the prey of womanish tremors; he goes
gaily like a true Mariner to confront the elements. The boat is ready,
and four gallant salts are resting on their oars; the Seadog steps
recklessly on board and looks at the weather. Ha! there is a sea of at
least two inches high running, and that frail boat must traverse that
wild space. No matter! The man who would blench at even two hundred
yards of water, with waves even three inches high is totally unworthy of
the name of a British Seadog! One thought of friends and mother dear;
one last look at the Club where that sole was served, and then, with all
the ferocious determination of his conquering race, the Seadog bids the
men give way. It is an awful sight! Four strokes, and the bow man
receives as nearly as possible half a pint of water on his jersey!
Steady! No shirking, my sons of the sea-kings. Twenty strokes
more--the peril is past; and the Seadog bounds on to the deck of his
stout vessel. He is saved. A basket with a turbot is in the
stern-sheets; that turbot will form part of the Seadog's humble evening
meal. It cost a guinea, and the North Sea amateurs, who received two
shillings of that amount, would doubtless rejoice could they know that
they risked their lives in a tearing August gale to provide for the
wants of a brother Seadog.
By the time Lewis had finished his heroic reverie, he was nicely sheeted
with ice, for the spray froze as it fell, and he was alongside of the
smack that he wanted--which was more to the purpose. In a few minutes
he was engaged in dealing with a prosaic, crushed foot. A heavy boat
had jammed his patient against the iron side of the steam-carrier. The
man was stoical, like the rest of his mates, but he was in torture, for
the bones were all huddled into a twisted mass--a gruesome thing,
ladies, and a common thing, too, if you would but think it. Ferrier had
to use the knife first, for the accident was not so recent as he could
have wished; then for near half an hour he was working like some clever
conjurer, while the vessel heaved slowly, and the reek of the cabin
coiled rankly round him. What a picture! That man, the pride of his
university, the rising hope of the Royal Society, the professor whom
students would have idolized, was bending his superb head over a poor,
groaning sailorman, and performing a hard operation amid air that was
merely volatile sewage! A few men looked on; they are kind, but they
all suffer so much that the suffering of others is watched with passive
callousness.
"Brandy now, my man. This is your first and last drink, and you may
make it a good one. Don't give him any more, skipper, even if you have
it on board. You know why? Ah! the colour's coming back again. Now, my
lad, we're going to make your bed up on the cabin floor. Hand me a
flannel; and you, my man, some water out of the kettle. Now for a clean
place. I'll set up as a housemaid when I go ashore."
"Excuse me, sir, but if you thinks you're goin' to be let to scrub that
ar plank, sir, you're mistaken. I'm skipper here, and I'll do that jest
to show you how we thinks of your politeness, mister. Hand over that
scrubber."
"All right, you obstinate mule; of course you'll have your own way. Let
me see his mattress, then. Won't do! Which of you durst come with the
boat, and I'll send a cocoanut-fibre one for him?"
"We never talks about durst here, sir. Not many on us doesn't. We'll
go, when you goes."
So Lewis cheerily ended his task, and when his man was laid out, with a
dry bundle of netting under his head, the doctor bent over him only to
smile in his face quietly. He never looked at himself in a glass
excepting to part his hair; but he had learned that something in his
look tended to hearten his patients, so he gazed merrily at the cripple
and said, "Now, when you're better, tell your friends Professor Ferrier
said you were the pluckiest fellow he ever saw. I couldn't have borne
what you did. You are a real good, game bit of stuff! and don't let any
one tell me otherwise."
This unconscionable young doctor was picking up the proper tone for the
North Sea; he had no airs, and, when his boat was reeling away to his
own vessel again over the powdery crests of the sea, an Aldeburgh
fisherman said, "Well, Joe, be sewer, he's a wunnerful fine gent, that
is! He's the wunnerfullest, finest gent ever _I_ fared for to see. And
that he is--solid."
"Yes, Jimmy," said the skipper. "It's my belief, in a way o' speakin',
that if that theer mizen-boom catched you and knocked your head off,
that theer wunnerful young gent 'ud come, and he'd have his laugh, and
he'd up and he'd mend you, same as if you'd never come adrift, not one
little bit. What a thing is larnin', to be sewer. Yes, sir, he'd mend
you. Nobody knows what he can dew, and nobody knows what he can't dew.
If we puts to this night--and I don't know why not, for we're
sailin'--if we gets a turbot I'll pay for it, and he'll have that theer
fish if I swims for it."
"You've always got a good way o' puttin' things, skipper, and I says I
holds 'long o' you."
The patient slumbered blissfully in the dreary cabin, which could only
be likened to a bewitched laundry in which things were always being
washed and never cleaned; the men awaited the Admiral's signal; the snow
thickened into ponderous falling masses;--and the professor jumped on
deck, to be met with a loud boom of gratification by Tom, who had begun
to dread the snow.
I like to think of that young gentleman faring over the treacherous
lulls of sad water amid the sinister eddies of the snowstorm. I wonder
if any other country could produce a gently-nurtured young scholar who
would make a similar journey. It seems doubtful, and more than
doubtful.
Tom had been reading to the paralyzed fisherman, and, although his
ordinary tones had too much of the minute-gun about them to suit small
apartments, he could lower his voice to a quiet deep bass which was
anything but unpleasant, and he had completely charmed the poor helpless
one by reading--or rather intoning--"Evangeline." Seafaring folk _will_
have sentiment in their literature and music; humour must be of the most
obvious sort to suit them--in fact they usually care only for the
horseplay of literature--but pathos of any sort they accept at once, and
Tom had tears of pride in his eyes when he told Lewis how the man had
understood the first part of the poem, and how he had talked for a good
half-hour about the eviction of the Acadians, and its resemblance to the
fate of various fishermen's wives who had got behind with their rents.
The evening closed in a troublous horror of great darkness, and the
anxious night began. Ferrier always made up his mind to stay below at
night, and he amused himself either by snatching a chat with the
skipper, or by reading one or two good novels which he had brought. But
imagine the desolation, the sombre surroundings, the risks to be run
every hour--every second--and you will understand that those two English
gentlemen had something in them passing self-interest, passing all that
the world has to offer. Ferrier never dreamed of becoming a nautical
recluse; he was too full of the joy of life for that: but he had a
purpose, and he went right at his mark like a bullet from a rifle. Once
that evening he went on deck and tried to peer through the wall of
trembling darkness that surrounded him; the view made him feel like the
victim in Poe's awful Inquisition story--the walls seemed to be closing
in. Faintly the starboard light shone, so that the snowflakes crossed
its path like dropping emeralds that shone a little in glory and then
fell dark; on the other side a fitful stream of rubies seemed to be
pouring; the lurid gleam from the cabin shone up the hatchway;--and, for
the rest, there was cold, darkness, the shadow of dread, and yet the
lookout-men were singing a duet as if death were not. The freezing
drift was enough to stop one's breath, but the lads were quite at ease,
and, to the air of a wicked old shanty, they sang about weathering the
storm and anchoring by and by. Ferrier was not a conscious poet;--alas!
had he the fearful facility which this sinful writer once possessed, I
shudder to think of the sufferings of his friends when he described the
brooding weariness of this night in verse. He bottled up his verses and
turned them all into central fire; but he had poetry in every fibre all
the same.
Tom remarked, "This is very much like being iced for market. I wonder
what we could possibly do, if anything came into us as that barque did?
Let's talk about home."
"Pleasant indoors now; I can see the fire on the edges of the furniture.
The very thought of a hearthrug seems like a heathen luxury. What will
you do first when you get home, Tom?"
"Turkish bath."
"And then?"
"Oysters."
"Then?"
"Dinner."
"And after?"
"I'll spend the whole evening in pretending to myself I'm on the North
Sea again, and waking up to find that I've got my armchair under me."
"Can you see anything, Jim, just a point or so abaft the beam."
This was an ugly interruption to the Barmecides, who had begun to set
forth shadowy feasts. That is the way in thick weather; you are no
sooner out of one scrape than you blunder into another.
"Yes, sir, she'll go clear," sang out the man.
"She won't, I'm afraid," said Lewis, under his breath. It was most
puzzling; there was no guide; the snow made distances ridiculous, and
the black shadow came nearer.
"Up, all of you, and set your fenders. Doctor, show him a flare."
It was a smack, and her lights had gone wrong somehow; she was moving
but slowly, and she let the Mission vessel off with a hole in the mizen.
The scrimmage would have meant death had any breeze been blowing; but
the men took it coolly after the one dread minute of anxiety was over.
If we were all able to imagine our own deaths as possible--to _really_
imagine it, I mean--then one snowy night on the banks would drive any
man mad; no brain could stand it. We all know we shall die, but none of
us seem to believe it, or else no one would ever go to sea a second time
in winter. A steady opiate is at work in each man's being--blurring his
vision of extinction, and thus our seamen go through a certain
performance a dozen times over in a winter, and this performance is much
like that of a blindfold man driving a Hansom cab from Cornhill to
Marble Arch on a Saturday evening during a November fog.
The man who shoved the cork fender over the side had received a graze
which sent a big flap of skin over his eye and blinded him with blood.
He laughed when Lewis dressed him, and said, "That was near enough for
most people, sir. I've seen two or three like that in a night."
"Well, I like to see you laugh, but I thought all was over when I saw he
was going to give us the stem."
"So did I, sir; but fishermen has to git used to being drowned."
As Lennard and the doctor sat filling the crew's cabin with billows of
smoke, the former said--"There's a kind of frolicsome humour about these
men that truly pleases me. Frolicsome! isn't it?"
"Well, we've stood another dreary day out; but think of those poor
beggars aft, lying in pain and loneliness. Tom, let's say our prayers;
I don't know that there's much good in it, but when I think of twelve
thousand men bearing such a life as we've had, I think there must--there
must be some Power that won't let it last for ever. Mind, when we've
done praying, no more sentiment; we'll smoke and laugh after we've put
in a word for the fishermen--and ourselves."
"And somebody else."
"Who?"
"I'll write and ask Mr. Cassall. That's Miss Dearsley's uncle."
I have seen our Englishmen fool on in that aimless way during all sorts
of peril and trouble. I want you to understand that the evangelist and
the sceptic both were prepared to hear the scraunch of the collision on
that deadly night; they had seen two entire ships' companies lost since
they came out, yet they would not give in or look serious altogether.
They had come to found a hospital for the mangled hundreds of fishermen,
and they were going through with their task in the steady, dogged,
light-hearted British way. Foreigners and foreigneering Englishmen say
it is blockheaded denseness. Is it?
*CHAPTER II.*
*A CRUCIAL TEST.*
"When you sailed away in the Yarmouth ships,
I waved my hand as you passed the pier;
It was just an hour since you kissed my lips,
And I'll never kiss you no more, my dear.
* * * * *
For now they tell me you're dead and gone,
And all the world is nothing to me;
And there's the baby, our only one,
The bonny bairn that you'll never see."
("_The Mate's Wife_," _by J. Runciman_.)
Suffering--monotonous, ceaseless suffering; gallant endurance; sordid
filth; unnamed agonies; gnawing, petty pains; cold--and the chance of
death. That was the round of life that Lewis Ferrier gazed upon until a
day came that will be remembered, as Flodden Field was in Scotland, as
Gettysburg is in America, as January 19th, 1881, is in Yarmouth.
Ferrier had stuck to his terrible routine work, and, as Sir Everard
Romfrey observes: "To stick to work _after_ the great effort's
over--that's what shows the man." The man never flinched, though he had
tasks that might have wearied brain and heart by their sheer nastiness;
the healer must have no nerves.
A little break in the monotony came at last, and Mr. Ferrier and Mr. T.
Lennard had an experience which neither will forget on this side of the
grave. Contrary to the fashion of mere novelists, who are not dreamers
and who consequently cannot see the end of things, I tell you that both
men were kept alive, but they had something to endure.
The day had been fairly pleasant considering the time of year, and our
friends were kept busy in running from vessel to vessel, looking after
men with slight ailments. There was no snow, but some heavy banks hung
in the sky away to the eastward. When the sun sank, the west was almost
clear, and Tom and Lewis were electrified by the most extraordinary
sunset that either had ever seen. The variety of colour was not great;
all the open spaces of the sky were pallid green, and all the wisps of
cloud were leprous blue: it was the intensity of the hues that made the
sight so overpowering, for the spaces of green shone with a clear
glitter exactly like the quality of colours which you see on Crookes's
tubes when a powerful electric current is passed through.
"That's very artistic, and everything else of the sort; it's ah-h better
than any painting I ever saw, but there's something about it that
reminds me of snakes and things of that kind. Snakes! If you saw a
forked tongue come out of that blue you wouldn't be surprised."
"You're getting to be quite an impressionist, Tom. The sky is horrible.
I see all our vessels are getting their boats in; we'd better follow
suit. How's the glass, skipper?"
"Never saw anything like it, sir. This night isn't over yet, and I
reckon what's coming is coming from the nor'-east. We're going to reef
down. I haven't seen anything like this since 1866, and I remember we
had just such another evening."
As usual, the gulls were troubled in their minds, and wailed piercingly,
for they seem to be mercurial in temperament, and no better weather
prophets can be seen.
The two ambulance-service men went below, declining to show any
misgivings, and they had a good, desultory chat before anything happened
to call them on deck. They talked of the poor bruised fellows whom they
had seen; then of home; then of the splendid future when men would be
kinder, and no fisherman with festering wounds would ever be permitted
to die like a dog in a stinking kennel. Pleasant, honest talk it was,
for the talkers were pleasant and honest. No bad man can talk well.
Our two gentlemen had learned a long lesson of unselfishness, and each
of them seemed to become gentler and more worthy in proportion as he
gave up more and more of his comfort and his labour to serve others.
At last Ferrier said, "Well, Tom, we had a heavy turn in the autumn. If
we go this time we'll go together, and I've often wondered what that
could be like. What do men say when they meet the last together?
Whew-w! How I hate death. The monster! The beastly cold privation. To
leave even a North Sea smack must be bitter."
The patients were listening; the man with concussion was gone, cured,
and his place was held by a burly man who had tried (as heavy fellows
will) to haul his own fourteen stone up to the main-boom during a
breeze, in order to repair a reef-earring. The vessel came up to the
wind, and the jar flung poor Ebenezer Mutton clash on to the deck.
Luckily he did not land on his skull, but he had a dislocated ankle.
Ebenezer whispered, "I heern you talkin' about the gale, sir, and you're
right; we've got somethin' to come. I have a left arm that can beat any
glass ever was seen. I come down from the jaws of the gaff just when we
was snuggin' her before the gale in '66, and my arm went in four places.
Ever since then that there arm tells every change as plain as plain can
be. Yes, sir, it's hard to die, even out off a North Sea smack, as you
say. Just before the '66 breeze I used often to think, 'Shall I go
overboard?' but when we was disabled, and skipper told us 'twas every
man for hisself, I looked queer. My arm says there's bad a-comin', and
I know you don't skeer easy, or a wouldn't tell you."
A hollow sound filled the whole arch of the sky; it was a great,
bewildering sound like a cry--an immense imprecation of some stricken
Titan.
"What can that be?" murmured Lennard, with his bold face blanched.
"That caps everything."
The masterful sound held on for a little, and then sank into a tired
sort of moan.
"Callin' them together, sir,--that's what some o' the West Country chaps
calls the King o' the Winds speakin'. It's only snow gettin' looked in
the sky, and you'll see it come away in a little."
"I don't know what it is, Ebenezer, but I don't like it."
On deck the night was black, the splendid green of the west had burnt
out, and a breeze was making little efforts from time to time, with
little hollow moans.
"Bad, bad, bad, bad, sir," barked the skipper, angrily.
The vanward flights of twirling flakes came on then, as if suddenly
unleashed, the wind sprang up, and the great fight began. If you,
whoever you may be, and two more strong men had tried to shut an
ordinary door in the teeth of that first shock, you would have failed,
for the momentum was like that of iron.
"Steady, and look out," the skipper yelled.
The third hand was lifted off his feet and dashed into the lee channels.
Ferrier fought hard, but he was clutched by the hand of the wind, and
held against the mizen-mast; he could just clutch the rest in which a
life-buoy was hanging, and that alone saved him from being felled.
The Lord is a Man of War! Surely His hosts were abroad now. No work of
man's hands could endure the onset of the forces let loose on that bad
night. The sea jumped up like magic, and hurried before the lash of the
wind. Then, with a darkening swoop, came the snowstorm, hurled along on
wide wings; the last remnants of light fled; the vessel was shut in, and
the devoted company on board could only grope in the murk on deck. No
one would stay below, for the sudden, unexampled assault of the
hurricane had touched the nerve of the coolest.
I am told by one who was on a wide heath at the beginning of that
hurricane, that he was coated with solid ice from head to foot on the
windward side; his hair and beard were icicles; his spaniel cowered and
refused to move; and a splendid, strong horse, which was being driven
right in the teeth of the wind, suddenly put its nose to the ground, set
its forelegs wide apart, and refused to go on. Not far from the horse
was a great poplar, and this tree suddenly snapped like a stick of
macaroni; the horse started, whirled round, and galloped off with the
wind behind.
What must it have been at sea? Men durst not look to windward, for a
hard mass seemed to be thrust into nostrils and eyes, so that one was
forced to gasp and choke. As for the turmoil!--all Gravelotte, with
half a million men engaged, could not have made such a soul-quelling,
overmastering sound. Every capacity of sound, every possible discordant
vibration of the atmosphere was at work; and so, with bellow on bellow,
crash on crash, vast multitudinous shriek on shriek, that fateful
tempest went on.
Ferrier found that unless he could get under the lee of something or
other, he must soon be sheathed in a coat of ice that would prevent him
from stirring at all. Oddly enough, he found afterwards that the very
fate he dreaded had befallen several forlorn seamen: the icy missiles of
the storm froze them in; the wind did not chill them, it throttled them,
and they were found frozen rigid in various positions.
The mate came and whispered in Ferrier's ear (for shouting was useless),
"The skipper would like a word with you. We'll keep some sort of a
look-out, but it isn't much good at present. Come into our cabin."
Lewis was not sorry, for the waves began to take the vessel without
"noticing" her, as it were, just as a good hunter takes an easy ditch in
his stride. If one came perpendicularly upon her, it was easy to see
what must happen.
The skipper said, "I want you gentlemen to assist me. I'm ordered to
obey _you_, but I know this sea, and I tell you that I'm doubtful
whether I shall save the vessel. I can't keep her hove-to much longer,
for this simple reason as she'll bury herself and us. I've got two
hundred and forty-four miles to run home. Will you let me run her? If
so, I'll take her in under storm canvas. She's splendid before wind and
sea, and I can save her that way; if we stop as we are, I fear we drown.
I've seen so many years of it that I don't so much mind, but having you
is a terrible thing. Hishht, a sea's coming!--I can tell by the lull."
Then the two landsmen cowered involuntarily, and looked in each other's
eyes with a wild surmise, for a shock came which made the vessel quiver
like a tuning-fork in every fibre; the very pannikins on the cabin floor
rattled, and all the things in the pantry went like rapidly chattering
teeth. It was not like an ordinary blow of the sea. The skipper rushed
aft, hoping to get on deck through Ferrier's cabin, but he met a
cataract of water which blinded him, and he came back saying, "I doubt
her deck won't stand another like that. Now, gentlemen, it's for you to
decide."
"Skipper, send Bill up to help me with the boat. That last's drove her
abreast the skylight."
The one look-out man had saved himself. How, only a smacksman can tell.
The skipper came down again.
"Now, gentlemen, shall I run or not?"
"Well, skipper, if we get through this we shall be more needed than
ever."
"Yes, sir; but if that last sea hadn't glanced a bit on our starboard
bow, we _shouldn't_ have got through. We've saved the boat, but she was
snapped from the grips like a rotten tooth."
"But, skipper, we may be pooped in running, or we may do some damage to
the rudder and broach-to. Then we should be worse off than here."
"Very well, gentlemen. I'm not concerned for myself. My duty's done
now, and I'll do my best. I advise you to take some coffee, and try to
get a few hours' rest before the pinch comes. You'll not get much rest
then."
Another sea came, and another; the sound of the wind paralyzed thought
and made speech impossible. Had any one said, "The end of the world has
come," you would have felt only a mild surprise, for even the capacity
for fear or apprehension was stunned as the brain is stunned by a blow.
"I can't stand this any longer, Tom. Even brandy wouldn't do much good
for more than an hour. Do you hear me?"
Tom nodded in a dazed way.
"Well, then, let's go into the open somehow. Perhaps the skipper's
strong, hot coffee _will_ wake us. Anyhow, let us try a cup."
Oh! that indescribable night! To know that death was feasting in that
blackness; to feel that vigilance was of no avail; to turn away
convulsed from the iron push of the demoniac force which for the time
seemed to have taken the place of an atmosphere. Smash! Rattle. Then a
wild whistling; a many lashes, that flapped and cracked; then the fall
of the spar, and the deep, quick sigh from Lennard as it whizzed close
by him. The gaff of the mizen had broken away, halliards and all, as if
a supernatural knife had been drawn across by a strong hand. The men
were hanging on, while a bellying, uncontrollable canvas buffeted them
as if it had volition and sense, and strove to knock their senses out of
them. A canvas adrift is like an unruly beast. All hands came through
the after-cabin, and attacked the thundering sail.
"For your lives now, chaps, before another sea comes! I can't slack
away these halliards. Bob, out knife, and up in the rings; cut them
away."
The gaff had fallen, but it was not clear yet. In some mysterious
fashion the mizen halliards had yielded and slipped for some distance
after a sudden shock had cut the gaff halliards and let the jaws of the
gaff free; so now the sail would neither haul up nor come down. Like a
cat Bob sprang up the remaining rings, and hacked at the gear; the sail
fell--and so did Bob, with a dull thud.
"Oh! skipper, that's a bad 'un."
"Cast a line round him till we've stowed. Jim, take hold of her; she's
falling off! Shove her to the wind again till we're done! Now, lads, all
of you on to the sheet! Haul! oh, haul! Slack away them toppin' lifts.
So; now we've got her! Where's Bob?"
"Doctor's got him below, skipper."
Poor Bob had tried to save himself with his right arm, and his hand had
been bent backwards over, and doubled back on his forearm. Bob was
settled for the rest of the gale. Lewis soon had the broken limb put up,
and Bob stolidly smoked and pondered on the inequalities of life. Why
was he, and not another, told off to spring up that reeling mizen into a
high breeze that ended by mastering him, and flinging him as if he had
been a poor wrestler matched with a champion? Here he was--crippled.
"Well, Bob, if this is a specimen, we shall see something when it
clears."
"Yes, doctor; you may say that, you may. I never see nothing like it.
If you give a man ten hundred thousand goulden sovereigns, and you says,
'Tell me directly you see anything comin',' he couldn't. When I was on
the look-out, I held this 'ere hand, as is broken, up before my eyes,
and I couldn't see it, sir--and that's the gospel, as I'm here!"
"Do you think we're out of the track of ships?"
"I know no more than Adam, sir. Hello! what's that?"
"Up here, sir--up, quick!"