Had Clara recognized Thurstane, she would have thrown herself into his
arms, and he would hardly have slept that night for joy.
As it was, he could not sleep for misery; festering at heart because of
that letter of rejection; almost maddened by his supposed discovery that
she would not speak to him, yet declaring to himself that he never would
have married her, because of her money; at the same time worshipping and
desiring her with passion; longing to die, but longing to die for her;
half enraged, and altogether wretched.
Meantime the southeaster, dead ahead and blowing harder every minute, was
sending its seas further and further aft. He left his wet berth on the
deck, reeled, or rather was flung, to the stern of the vessel, lodged
himself between the little wheel-house and the taffrail, and watched a
scene in consonance with his feelings. Innumerable twinklings of stars
faintly illuminated a cloudless, serene heaven, and a foaming, plunging
ocean. The slender, dark outlines of the sailless upper masts were leaning
sharply over to leeward, and describing what seemed like mystic circles
and figures against the lighter sky. The crests of seas showed with
ghostly whiteness as they howled themselves to death near by, or dashed
with a jar and a hoarse whistle over the bulwarks, slapping against the
sails and pounding upon the decks. The waves which struck the bows every
few seconds gave forth sounds like the strokes of Thor's hammer, and made
everything tremble from cathead to stempost.
Every now and then there were hoarse orders from the captain on the
quarter-deck, echoed instantly by sharp yells from the mate in the waist.
Now it was, "Lay aloft and furl the fore royal;" and ten minutes later,
"Lay aloft and furl the main royal." Scarcely was this work done before
the shout came, "Lay aloft and reef the fore-t'gallant-s'l;" followed
almost immediately by "Lay aloft and reef the main-t'gallant-s'l." Next
came, "Lay out forrard and furl the flying jib." Each command was
succeeded by a silent, dark darting of men into the rigging, and presently
a trampling on deck and a short, sharp singing out at the ropes, with
cries from aloft of "Haul out to leeward; taut hand; knot away."
Under the reduced sail the brig went easier for a while; but the half gale
had made up its mind to be a hurricane. It was blowing more savagely every
second. One after another the topgallant sails were double-reefed,
close-reefed, and at last furled. The watch on deck had its hands full to
accomplish this work, so powerfully did the wind drag on the canvas.
Presently, far away forward--it seemed on board some other craft, so faint
was the sound--there came a bang, bang, bang! on the scuttle of the
forecastle, and a hollow shout of "All hands reef tops'ls ahoy!"
Up tumbled the "starbowlines," or starboard watch, and joined the
"larbowlines" in the struggle with the elements. No more sleep that night
for man, boy, mate, or master. Reef after reef was taken in the topsails,
until they were two long, narrow shingles of canvas, and still the wind
brought the vessel well down on her beam ends, as if it would squeeze her
by main force under water. The men were scarcely on deck from their last
reefing job, when boom! went the jib, bursting out as if shot from a
cannon, and then whipping itself to tatters.
"Lay out forrard!" screamed the mate. "Lay out and furl it."
After a desperate struggle, half the time more or less under water, two
men dragged in and fastened the fragments of the jib, while others set the
foretop-mast staysail in its place. But the wind was full of mischief; it
seemed to be playing with the ship's company; it furnished one piece of
work after another with dizzying rapidity. Hardly was the jib secured
before the great mainsail ripped open from top to bottom, and in the same
puff the close-reefed foretopsail split in two with a bang, from earing to
earing. Now came the orders fast and loud: "Down yards! Haul out reef
tackle! Lay out and furl! Lay out and reef!"
It was a perfect mess; a score of ropes flying at once; the men rolling
about and holding on; the sails slapping like mad, and ends of rigging
streaming off to leeward. After an exhausting fight the mainsail was
furled, the upper half of the topsail set close-reefed, and everything
hauled taut again. Now came an hour or so without accident, but not
without incessant and fatiguing labor, for the two royal yards were
successively sent down to relieve the upper masts, and the foretopgallant
sail, which had begun to blow loose, was frapped with long pieces of
sinnet.
During this period of comparative quiet Thurstane ventured an attempt to
reach his stateroom. The little gloomy cabin was going hither and thither
in a style which reminded him of the tossings of Gulliver's cage after it
had been dropped into the sea by the Brobdingnag eagle. The steward was
seizing up mutinous trunks and chairs to the table legs with rope-yarns.
The lamp was swinging and the captain's compass see-sawing like monkeys
who had gone crazy in bedlams of tree-tops. From two of the staterooms
came sounds which plainly confessed that the occupants were having a bad
night of it.
"How is the lady passenger?" Thurstane could not help whispering.
"Guess she's asleep, sah," returned the negro. "Fus-rate sailor, sah. But
them greasers is having tough times," he grinned. "Can't abide the sea,
greasers can't, sah."
Smiling with a grim satisfaction at this last statement, Thurstane gave
the man a five-dollar piece, muttered, "Call me if anything goes wrong,"
and slipped into his narrow dormitory. Without undressing, he lay down and
tried to sleep; but, although it was past midnight, he stayed broad awake
for an hour or more; he was too full of thoughts and emotions to find easy
quiet in a pillow. Near him--yes, in the very next stateroom--lay the
being who had made his life first a heaven and then a hell. The present
and the past struggled in him, and tossed him with their tormenting
contest. After a while, too, as the plunging of the brig increased, and he
heard renewed sounds of disaster on deck, he began to fear for Clara's
safety. It was a strange feeling, and yet a most natural one. He had not
ceased to love; he seemed indeed to love her more than ever; to think of
her struggling in the billows was horrible; he knew even then that he
would willingly die to save her. But after a time the incessant motion
affected him, and he dozed gradually into a sound slumber.
Hours later the jerking and pitching became so furious that it awakened
him, and when he rose on his elbow he was thrown out of his berth by a
tremendous lurch. Sitting up with his feet braced, he listened for a
little to the roar of the tempest, the trampling feet on deck, and the
screaming orders. Evidently things were going hardly above; the storm was
little less than a tornado. Seriously anxious at last for Clara--or, as he
tried to call her to himself, Miss Van Diemen--he stole out of his room,
clambered or fell up the companionway, opened the door after a struggle
with a sea which had just come inboard, got on to the quarter-deck, and,
holding by the shrouds, quailed before a spectacle as sublime and more
terrible than the Great Cañon of the Colorado.
It was daylight. The sun was just rising from behind a waste of waters; it
revealed nothing but a waste of waters. All around the brig, as far as the
eye could reach, the Pacific was one vast tumble of huge blue-gray,
mottled masses, breaking incessantly in long, curling ridges, or lofty,
tossing steeps of foam. Each wave was composed of scores of ordinary
waves, just as the greater mountains are composed of ranges and peaks.
They seemed moving volcanoes, changing form with every minute of their
agony, and spouting lavas of froth. All over this immense riot of
tormented deeps rolled beaten and terrified armies of clouds. The wind
reigned supreme, driving with a relentless spite, a steady and obdurate
pressure, as if it were a current of water. It pinned the sailors to the
yards, and nearly blew Thurstane from the deck.
The Lolotte was down to close-reefed topsails, close-reefed spencer and
spanker, and storm-jib. Even upon this small and stout spread of canvas
the wind was working destruction, for just as Thurstane reached the deck
the jib parted and went to leeward in ribbons. Sailors were seen now on
the bowsprit fighting at once with sea and air, now buried in water, and
now holding on against the storm, and slowly gathering in the flapping,
snapping fragments. Next a new jib (a third one) was bent on, hoisted
half-way, and blown out like a piece of wet paper. Almost at the same
moment the captain saw threatening mouths grimace in the mainsail, and
screamed "Never mind there forrard. Lay up on the maintawps'l yard. Lay up
and furl."
After half an hour's fight, the sail bagging and slatting furiously, it
was lashed anyway around the yard, and the men crawled slowly down again,
jammed and bruised against the shrouds by the wind. Every jib and
forestaysail on board having now been torn out, the brig remained under
close-reefed foretopsail, spencer, and spanker, and did little but drift
to leeward. The gale was at its height, blowing as if it were shot out of
the mouths of cannon, and chasing the ocean before it in mountains of
foam. One thing after another went; the topgallants shook loose and had to
be sent down; the chain bobstays parted and the martingale slued out of
place; one of the anchors broke its fastenings and hammered at the side;
the galley gave way and went slopping into the lee scuppers. No food that
morning except dry crackers and cold beef; all hands laboring exhaustingly
to repair damages and make things taut. For more than half an hour three
men were out on the guys and backropes endeavoring to reset the
martingale, deluged over and over by seas, and at last driven in beaten.
Others were relashing the galley, hauling the loose anchor and all the
anchors up on the rail, and resetting the loose lee rigging, which
threatened at every lurch to let the masts go by the board.
Thurstane presently learned that the wind had changed during the night, at
first dropping away for a couple of hours, then reopening with fresh rage
from the west, and finally hauling around into the northwest, whence it
now came in a steady tempest. The vessel too had altered her course; she
was no longer beating in long tacks toward the southeast; she was heading
westward and struggling to get away from the land. Thurstane asked few
questions; he was a soldier and had learned to meet fate in silence; he
knew too that men weighted with responsibilities do not like to be
catechised. But he guessed from the frequent anxious looks of the captain
eastward that the California coast was perilously near, and that the brig
was more likely to be drifting toward it than making headway from it.
Surveying through his closed hands the stormy windward horizon, he gave up
all thoughts of getting away from Clara by reaching San Diego, and turned
toward the idea of saving her from shipwreck.
None of the other passengers came on deck this morning. Garcia, horribly
seasick and frightened, held on desperately to his berth, and passed the
time in screaming for the "stewrt," cursing his evil surroundings, calling
everybody he could think of pigs, dogs, etc., and praying to saints and
angels. Coronado, not less sick and blasphemous, had more command over his
fears, and kept his prayers for the last pinch. Clara, a much better
sailor, and indeed an uncommonly good one, was so far beaten by the motion
that she did not get up, but lay as quiet as the brig would let her,
patiently awaiting results, now and then smiling at Garcia's shouts, but
more frequently thinking of Thurstane, and sometimes praying that she
might find him alive at Fort Yuma.
The steward carried cold beef, hard bread, brandy, coffee, and gruel (made
in his pantry) from stateroom to stateroom. The girl ate heartily,
inquired about the storm, and asked, "When shall we get there?" Garcia and
Coronado tried a little of the gruel and a good deal of the brandy and
water, and found, as people usually do under such circumstances, that
nothing did them any good. The old man wanted to ask the steward a hundred
questions, and yelled for his nephew to come and translate for him.
Coronado, lying on his back, made no answer to these cries of despair,
except in muttered curses and sniffs of angry laughter. So passed the
morning in the cabin.
Thurstane remained on deck, eating in soldierly fashion, his pockets full
of cold beef and crackers, and his canteen (for every infantry officer
learns to carry one) charged with hot coffee. He was pretty wet, inasmuch
as the spray showered incessantly athwart ships, while every few minutes
heavy seas came over the quarter bulwarks, slamming upon the deck like the
tail of a shark in his agonies. During the morning several great combers
had surmounted the port bow and rushed aft, carrying along everything
loose or that could be loosened, and banging against the companion door
with the force of a runaway horse. And these deluges grew more frequent,
for the gale was steadily increasing in violence, howling and shrieking
out of the gilded eastern horizon as if Lucifer and his angels had been
hurled anew from heaven.
About noon the close-reefed foretopsail burst open from earing to earing,
and then ripped up to the yard, the corners stretching out before the wind
and cracking like musket shots. To set it again was impossible; the orders
came, "Down yard--haul out reef tackle;" then half a dozen men laid out on
the spar and began furling. Scarcely was this terrible job well under way
when a whack of the slatting sail struck a Kanaka boy from his hold, and
he was carried to leeward by the gale as if he had been a bag of old
clothes, dropping forty feet from the side into the face of a monstrous
billow. He swam for a moment, but the next wave combed over him and he
disappeared. Then he was seen further astern, still swimming and with his
face toward the brig; then another vast breaker rushed upon him with a
lion-like roar, and he was gone. Nothing could be done; no boat might live
in such a sea; it would have been perilous to change course. The captain
glanced at the unfortunate, clenched his fists desperately, and turned to
his rigging. Another man took the vacant place on the yard, and the hard,
dizzy, frightful labor there went on unflaggingly, with the usual cries of
"Haul out, knot away," etc. It was one of the forms of a sailor's funeral.
No time for comments or emotions; the gale filled every mind every minute.
It was soon found that the spanker, a pretty large sail, well aft and not
balanced by any canvas at the bow, drew too heavily on the stern and made
steering almost impossible. A couple of Kanakas were ordered to reef it,
but could do nothing with it; the skipper cursed them for "sojers" (our
infantryman smiling at the epithet) and sent two first-class hands to
replace them; but these also were completely beaten by the hurricane. It
was not till a whole watch was put at the job that the big, bellying sheet
could be hauled in and made fast in the reef knots. The brig now had not a
rag out but her spencer and reduced spanker, both strong, small, and low
sails, eased a good deal by their slant, shielded by the elevated
port-rail, and thus likely to hold. But it was not sailing; it was simply
lying to. The vessel rose and fell on the monstrous waves, but made
scarcely more headway than would a tub, and drifted fast toward the still
unseen California coast.
All might still have gone well had the northwester continued as it was.
But about noon this tempest, which already seemed as furious as it could
possibly be, suddenly increased to an absolute hurricane, the wind fairly
shoving the brig sidelong over the water. Bang went the spanker, and then
bang the spencer, both sails at once flying out to leeward in streamers,
and flapping to tatters before the men could spring on the booms to secure
them. The destruction was almost as instant and complete as if it had been
effected by the broadside of a seventy-four fired at short range.
"Bend on the new spencer," shouted the captain. "Out with it and up with
it before she rolls the sticks out of her."
But the rolling commenced instantly, giving the sailors no time for their
work. No longer steadied by the wind, the vessel was entirely at the mercy
of the sea, and went twice on her beam ends for every billow, first to lee
and then to windward. Presently a great, white, hissing comber rose above
her larboard bulwark, hung there for a moment as if gloating on its prey,
and fell with the force of an avalanche, shaking every spar and timber
into an ague, deluging the main deck breast high, and swashing knee-deep
over the quarter-deck. The galley, with the cook in it, was torn from its
lashings and slung overboard as if it had been a hencoop. The companion
doors were stove in as if by a battering ram, and the cabin was flooded in
an instant with two feet of water, slopping and lapping among the baggage,
and stealing under the doors of the staterooms. The sailors in the waist
only saved themselves by rushing into the rigging during the moment in
which the breaker hung suspended.
Nothing could be done; the vessel must lift herself from this state of
submergence; and so she did, slowly and tremulously, like a sick man
rising from his bed. But while the ocean within was still running out of
her scuppers, the ocean without assaulted her anew. Successive billows
rolled under her, careening her dead weight this way and that, and keeping
her constantly wallowing. No rigging could bear such jerking long, and
presently the dreaded catastrophe came.
The larboard stays of the foremast snapped first; then the shrouds on the
same side doubled in a great bight and parted; next the mast, with a loud,
shrieking crash, splintered and went by the board. It fell slowly and with
an air of dignified, solemn resignation, like Caesar under the daggers of
the conspirators. The cross stays flew apart like cobwebs, but the lee
shrouds unfortunately held good; and scarcely was the stick overboard
before there was an ominous thumping at the sides, the drum-beat of death.
It was like guns turned on their own columns; like Pyrrhus's elephants
breaking the phalanx of Pyrrhus.
"Axes!" roared the captain at the first crack. "Axes!" yelled the mate as
the spar reeled into the water. "Lay forward and clear the wreck," were
the next orders; "cut away with your knives."
Two axes were got up from below; the sailors worked like beavers,
waist-deep in water; one, who had lost his knife, tore at the ropes with
his teeth. After some minutes of reeling, splashing, chopping, and
cutting, the fallen mast, the friend who had become an enemy, the angel
who had become a demon, was sent drifting through the creamy foam to
leeward. Meantime the mate had sounded the pumps, and brought out of them
a clear stream of water, the fresh invasion of ocean.
Directly on this cruel discovery, and as if to heighten its horror to the
utmost, the captain, clinging high up the mainmast shrouds, shouted,
"Landa-lee! Get ready the boats."
Without a word Thurstane hurried down into the cabin to save Clara from
this twofold threatening of death.