Jake's voice seemed ever so far away in the distance, and there was a
confused sort of humming, buzzing noise in my ears; while some heavy
weight on the top of my head appeared to be pressing me down, although I
struggled frantically to free myself.
It was all in vain, though.
I was whirled round and round in an eddy of the sea; and soon my efforts
ceased.
Then, all at once, when almost the sense of suffocation had passed, I
felt a hand grasp my collar at the back of my neck; and, oh, gracious
heaven! I was dragged above the surface and drew once more a breath of
air. I took in a gulp of water with this; but, in spite of the water,
the air was the sweet essence of life and I breathed again!
I had been in a dream before--a terrible dream; now I came to myself,
and my recollection returned.
The buzzing sounds that had previously echoed through my brain resolved
themselves into the hoarse shouts of the crew of the _Josephine_; the
exclamations of the sailors being mingled with the roaring, crashing
break of the waves as they washed over the wreck, and the creaking and
rending of the timbers of the poor ship, while, nearer yet to me, I
could distinguish the cheering cry of faithful Jake:
"Hole up, Mass' Tom, um got um safe now. Hole up an' take good breff;
we'se all right, an' ebberybody safe!"
At the same moment that he spoke Jake lifted me up on something which I
could feel with my feet, and I opened my eyes.
At first, I was almost blinded by the sea-water which had got into them,
and the salt spray which continually dashed over my head; but, in a
minute or two, I was able to see where I was and grasp the situation.
The ship was lying over on her starboard side, with her decks submerged
up to the hatches, and her masts horizontal on the surface of the sea;
but, the whole of her port side was clear out of the water, and,
although the waves were breaking over this, still the major part of the
quarter and a portion of the poop were almost high and dry in the
intervals between the following rollers that ever and anon swept up to
their level.
On this after part of the ship, Jake had managed to clamber up, lugging
me along with him; and, as I looked round, I could recognise Captain
Miles and Mr Marline, as well as several others of the hands, who had
sought such a vantage-ground of safety.
Away forwards, the _Josephine_ was completely buried in the huge billows
that were constantly surging over her; but here, too, clinging on to the
main-chains was another group of sailors, amongst whom I could make out
the tall figure of Jackson, with Cuffee and Davis close beside him.
Captain Miles perceived me almost as soon as I saw him.
"Ah, there you are, Tom!" he cried. "Thank God you are not lost! I
made a hard grab at you when the ship heeled over, but missed you; and
thought that the skylight hatch carried you away overboard when it
lifted."
"Me watchee him sharp, sah," explained Jake. "I'se see de squall comin'
an' run aft for tell, an' den I clutch hole Mass' Tom, an' here we is!"
"You've saved your young master then," exclaimed the captain; "so, Tom,
you've got to thank the darkey instead of me! But, how many of us have
escaped?"
As he said this, Captain Miles glanced about and appeared to be
reckoning up the list of the crew on his fingers, for I could see his
lips move.
"Marline, you're all right, eh?" he went on presently, speaking out
aloud.
"Oh, yes, I'm here, thanks to Providence," said the first mate with
almost a sob in his voice. It told better than words his gratitude to
the power on high that had preserved him.
"And Jackson, I see, with Davis and Cuffee," continued the captain,
running through the names of the survivors as far as he could make them
out.
"There's Adze, the carpenter, too, in the main-chains, with those two
German sailors, Hermann and Gottlieb; while there are five more of the
hands alongside me," said Mr Marline looking round, too, and taking
stock.
"But, where's Moggridge?" asked Captain Miles, missing the boatswain at
that moment and not seeing him anywhere. I felt my heart sink at the
thought that he was gone.
"Here I am, your honour," however, sang out the old fellow, climbing up
over the stern gallery. "I almost lost the number of my mess; but I've
managed to cheat Davy Jones this time."
"That makes, with Master Tom here, just sixteen souls, out of eighteen
we had on board, all told," said the captain. "Anybody seen the
steward?"
"No, he isn't here, poor fellow," replied Mr Marline. "He was below in
his pantry at the time the squall struck us, and must have been drowned
before he could scramble out."
"There's only one other, then, missing," said the captain. "Count the
hands again, Marline."
The first mate did this; and, then, it was found, on hailing Jackson in
the main-chains--the sea at present making a breach between us and
dividing our forces--that the other sailor was a man named Briggs, who
had been ailing for some days past. He had been in his bunk in the
forecastle when the ship capsized, so his fate was almost as certain as
that of Harry, the mulatto steward.
All things considered, though, it was a great mercy, from the sudden
nature of the calamity, that so many of us should have been saved. But
for the fact of the accident having occurred in the afternoon, when the
majority of the hands were fortunately on deck aft, many more lives
would undoubtedly have been lost.
However, albeit temporarily preserved from the peril of a watery grave,
our outlook, clustered there together on the outside of the partly-
submerged vessel, was a very sorry one; for, the sea was still running
high, and the waves were breaking over us in sheets of foam, and,
although the sun was shining down and the air was comparatively warm,
this made us feel most uncomfortable. Besides, the continual onslaught
of the rolling billows necessitated our holding on to everything we
could get a grip of, to prevent ourselves from being washed away.
We had to lie along the side of the ship, grasping the mizzen rigging,
which attitude was a very wearying one; for, the sea would lift us up as
the swell surged by, and then, we had to take a fresh grip, our feet
sliding down the hull as the billow retired and the vessel sunk down in
the hollow.
"I say, Marline," called out the captain presently, "as you are nearest
the signal halliards, do you think you can manage to run them clear?"
"I'll try, sir," answered the other; and Moggridge, who had now crept
alongside the mate, helping him, the two contrived to haul out the rope
in question.
"Now, who's got a knife handy?" next inquired Captain Miles.
There was half a dozen replies to this question; but, ere the article
wanted could be passed along, the old boatswain had drawn out his from
his waistband by means of the lanyard slung round his neck, and was
busily employed in cutting up the signal halliards into short lengths of
about a fathom each.
"Ah, I see you guessed what I was after," said the captain noticing
this. "If we lash ourselves to the rigging here, it will save us a
world of exertion and trouble, besides leaving our hands free for other
purposes."
"Aye, aye, sir, I know'd what you want," responded Moggridge, and
passing down the pieces of rope as he cut them off, all of us were
pretty soon well secured from being washed away, each man helping to tie
up his neighbour in turn.
"Golly, massa, dis am a purdicafirment!" ejaculated Jake, grinning as
usual, and with his ebony face shining with the spray; "I'se 'gin feel
want grub--um precious hungry."
"I am afraid that'll not be our only want, my poor fellow," said Captain
Miles in a melancholy voice; but rousing himself a minute afterwards he
added more cheerfully, "Wait till the sea gets down, and then we'll try
to improve our condition. I wonder, though, how these other fellows are
getting on in the chains amidships? Jackson, ahoy!"
"Hullo, sir," came a faint hail in answer, from amid the breaking seas
further on ahead of us, where only a black spot of a head could be seen
occasionally emerging from the mass of encircling foam.
"Are you all right there?" sang out the captain.
"We're alive, sir; but nearly tired out," replied Jackson in a low weak
tone.
"Can't you try, man, to work your way aft and join us," urged Captain
Miles, comprehending how exhausted the young seaman and his companions
there must be. "There's plenty of room here for all of us, and you'll
not be so much worked about by the sea."
"The waves are too strong for us, sir," cried out the other, but his
voice now seeming to have a little more courage in it, for he added
after a bit, "I think we can manage it, though, if you will make fast
the bight of the topsail sheet and heave the end to us. It will serve
us to hold on by as we pass along the bulwarks."
"All right, my hearty," answered Captain Miles, he and a couple of the
sailors beside him doing as Jackson had suggested.
Then, the captain himself, undoing his lashings, seized one of the brief
intervals in which the after part of the hull rose above the sea; when,
standing on his feet, while his legs were held by the two sailors, he
hove the end of the rope towards Jackson, who, clutching hold of it,
secured it to the main-shrouds, whence it was stretched taut to the
mizzen rigging, thus serving as a sort of life-line by which the men
could pass aft.
When this was done, the men with Jackson in the main-chains crept
cautiously along the bulwarks, half in and half out of the water,
clutching on to the topsail sheet hand over hand, soon joined us on the
quarter galley--the young second mate being the last to leave, waiting
until his comrades were in safety.
The passage from the one place to the other was perilous in the extreme;
for, the waves surged up sometimes completely over the poor fellows'
heads, when they had once abandoned their footing and had only the frail
swaying rope to support them against the wash of the water. They were
roughly oscillated to and fro, hove up out of the sea one minute and
lowered down again into it the next.
It was a wonder some of them did not fall off, getting sucked under the
keel of the ship; but, gripping the life-line with a clutch of
desperation, their passage across the perilous bridge was at last safely
accomplished, when the entire sixteen of us, including my own humble
self, were at length gathered together in one group on the counter-rail
below the bend of the poop. The new-comers were then lashed to the
mizzen rigging like the rest of us, and we all waited with what hope and
patience we could for the sea to calm down.
By this time, it was late in the afternoon; and, presently, the sun sank
down away to the west in his ocean bed, surrounded by a radiant glow of
crimson and gold that flashed upward from the horizon to the zenith.
The wind had died away too, the last violent squall which had been so
disastrous to the _Josephine_, having been the expiring blast of the
hurricane; so, although, as I've said, the sea still continued to run
high, the waves rolled by more regularly and with an equal pulsation, as
if Father Neptune was rocking himself gradually to sleep. The old
tyrant was evidently; exhausted with the mad rioting in which he had
recently been indulging, and the thrashing which the gale had given him!
There was no sleep for us, however, excepting such hasty little
droppings off into brief forgetfulness that our worn-out bodies gave way
to for an instant; for we were constantly being roused up, almost as
soon as our wearied eyelids had closed, by the sudden rush of the spent
wash of some broken wave wetting our already wet garments. This
banished all thoughts of repose; and, when the darkness of night came
on, it was cold and dreary in the extreme, the hours seeming to drag out
to the length of a lifetime.
Poor faithful Jake lay close to me so as to protect me as much as
possible from the wash of the sea; and I found out, when morning light
came once more to cheer us, that he had actually stripped off a guernsey
vest, which Captain Miles had given him to save him from exposure on the
night of the thunder-storm, and had fastened this round my shoulders in
order to keep me warm!
I shall never forget Jake's thoughtful action, I believe, as long as I
live, for it made a great impression on me when I discovered such a
striking proof of his devotion; and, as I now retrace the incidents of
the past, the incident stands out prominently in evidence of a negro's
brotherly love.
Why, his black skin always seemed white to me ever after. Aye, although
born an African, his heart was truer than that of many a European, whose
complexion is only a trick of colour!
During the night we were all silent; but, when the sun rose in the east,
flooding the sea with the rosy tint of dawn, hope came back to us and
our tongues were unloosed--the more especially as the force of the waves
had considerably lessened, hardly a scrap of spray being now washed over
us, while the blows of the billows against the side of the ship were no
longer heard.
The sea really was calming down at last.
God was watching over us!
"Say, captain," said Mr Marline, who was the first to bestir himself,
"do you think there's any prospect of our righting the ship?"
The captain was asleep, I believe, for the first mate had to repeat his
question twice before he could get an answer.
"I'm sure I hope so," at last sleepily muttered Captain Miles, with a
portentous yawn--"only wait till the swell calms down and we'll see
about it."
"But it is calm now," rejoined the other.
"Then wake me again when it is calmer," replied Captain Miles; and then,
he turned on his side and proceeded with his nap as coolly as if he were
comfortably tucked up in his nice swinging cot in the cabin.
"Well!" exclaimed Mr Marline, "of all the cool, self-possessed men I
ever met in my life, you beat the lot!"
He was talking to himself, but the hands heard him, and there was a
general snigger all round, the captain's very composure having given
confidence to all. The men believed that he would not have taken things
so quietly unless he had some sure hope of our speedy release from such
a precarious position.
"He is a rare brave un," put in Moggridge. "I've sailed with him man
and boy for many a v'y'ge afore this, and I allers found him the same,
calm and plucky in danger, and keeping a stiff upper lip when in perils
that frighten other folk. Captain Miles, sir, is a man as a sailor
should be proud to sail under--that's what I says!"
"Eh, what, what?" murmured the captain, half waking up on hearing his
name spoken, and lifting his head from between his clasped hands.
"I was a-saying, sir, as how you knew what's what," replied the
boatswain, "and I don't know of any other man I'd say sich of."
"Belay that," said Captain Miles, rousing up now and rubbing his eyes.
"Ah, it's morning, I see! Well, Mr Marline, and how goes it?"
"As well as can be expected under the circumstances," answered the
other.
"Bother circumstances," rejoined the captain; "we must make the best of
them we can. Now, let us see what's to be done."
"Do you think we can right her, sir?" asked the mate repeating his old
query.
"Right her? yes, certainly, if we can cut away the masts. She's not
water-logged, and all sound below, I fancy, as far as I can see; for the
hatches have been battened down since Monday."
"But she's rather down by the head, sir," said Mr Marline, as the two
rose on their feet and proceeded to look round the vessel as well as
they could from the top of the poop bulwarks, whence they surveyed her
position and surroundings.
"Ah!" exclaimed Captain Miles, "the fore-peak must have been left open
when those spare sails were got out, so that she has taken in some water
there. Never mind, though, there's a stout bulkhead separating the
compartment from the main hold, and, if there's no leak below, we'll be
all right."
"But, the masts have been working the decks all this time," suggested
the mate, "and if the sea has got in through the straining of the
timbers we must sink in time."
"Sink your grandmother, Marline!" retorted the captain, "you forget that
our main cargo is rum, which is ever so much lighter than water, and
more buoyant. As long as we have that below we'll float, never you
fear! But, the job is to cut away the masts if we can; she'll never
right, of course, till that is done. A pity your rigging was so well
set up, Marline! If the sticks had only gone by the board when the
squall struck us we'd be all right now."
"I don't know that, captain," replied the other. "If the masts had been
badly stayed they would have gone in the height of the hurricane; and
then, where would we be now?"
"Not in the Sargasso Sea, I fancy," said Captain Miles with a hearty
laugh. "But we can't do anything yet, though, till the sea has gone
down more. Men," he added, "keep your pecker up! Providence having
watched over us thus far will now not desert us, I am confident, and
we'll yet weather on Mr Marline's circumstances!"
All hands gave a cheer at this hopeful speech, and the sun having by
this time dried our soddened clothes besides warming us, we began to
feel more comfortable and easy, the captain's words giving us fresh
courage.
Towards noon, however, the heat brought on a most terrific thirst, which
was all the more painful from our not seeing any chance of relieving it;
for, although, like the "ancient mariner," we saw "water, water
everywhere," there was not a drop of the wholesome fluid, as far as we
knew, that we could drink.
In this dire calamity, Jackson proved our guardian angel.
"I say, captain," he called out, after climbing along the bulwarks down
into that part of the waist of the ship which was clear of the sea,
letting himself swing down by the end of the topsail halliards which
were belayed to the side, "there's one of the water-casks lashed here
that did not fetch away to leeward with the rest when she canted over;
and it's full too. If anyone has got a hat, or anything that I can draw
off the water in, I will start the bung and we can all splice the main-
brace."
"Hurrah!" shouted Captain Miles. "That's the best news I have heard for
many a day. Here, Marline, pass him down my wide-awake. Mind how you
drive out the bung, Jackson, and have something ready to close up the
hole again; or else, all the contents of the cask will be wasted 'fore
the hands are served round."
"I'll take care, sir," replied the young seaman, who had now turned the
end of the topsail halliards into a bight round his body, so that he
could swing down in front of the water-cask and yet have his hands free.
Then, taking out a marlinespike, which had caught in the rigging somehow
or other, he managed, after several blows on either side of the cask, to
start the bung. This, from the position in which the ship was lying,
was now horizontal instead of perpendicular; so, as soon as it came out,
the water flowed at once into the captain's wide-awake hat, which
Jackson had under the bung-hole, stopping up this again with the cork as
soon as the hat was full.
Mr Marline was bending down from the bulwarks above him to receive the
strange jug when the other handed it up to him, and he passed it on to
Captain Miles, who allowed me to have the first drink.
It tasted like nectar--better than any draught I had ever had before or
since!
Captain Miles himself then took a gulp of the grateful contents of his
old hat, passing it on to Moggridge; and, when emptied, as it very soon
was, the wide-awake was filled and refilled by Jackson until every man
had satisfied his thirst--the last to enjoy the water which he had been
the means of procuring being the brave young seaman himself, just in the
same way as he had been the last to quit the post of danger when helping
his shipmates out of the main-chains.
Quenching our thirst gave us all new life; so, later on in the
afternoon, Captain Miles set the men to work casting off the ropes as
best they could with the idea of freeing the masts. However, we could
do nothing without an axe, for no man had anything handier than his
clasp-knife, which naturally was of no use in helping to cut away the
cordage and heavy spars that kept the ship down on her beam-ends.
What was to be done?
We were all in a dilemma, one man suggesting one thing, and another
proposing a fresh plan for getting rid of the masts; when, Adze, the
carpenter, who had said nothing as yet, spoke for the first time.
"I left a large axe o' mine," he said quietly, as if saying nothing
particularly worthy of notice--"I left a large axe o' mine in my bunk in
the fo'c's'le; and if ary a one can git down theer, he'll find it on the
top side to his starboard hand as he goes in."
"But, the fo'c's'le's full of water," said Mr Marline, "and a man must
be a good diver to creep in there and get the axe under eight or twelve
foot of sea! Besides, I daresay it will have been washed away from
where Adze put it in his bunk, the lurch of the ship having shifted
everything to leeward."
"It war to leeward already in the top bunk, I tell 'ee," rejoined the
carpenter; "an', bein' that heavy, I spec's it's theer right enough.
Only I can't dive, nor swim above water for that matter, so it's no use
my going after it."
"I'll go, massa captain," shouted out Jake, who had been listening
eagerly to this conversation. "I'se dibe like porpuss an' swim like
fiss."
"I know that," said Captain Miles laughing. "I recollect the way you
came aboard my ship. But you can try if you like, darkey. If you find
that axe, you'll be the saving of all of us, and give a fair return for
your passage, my hearty!"
Jake did not need any further persuasion.
Making his way along the bulwarks, he clambered on to the main rigging,
now lying flat across the capsized vessel, until he came to a clear
space between the mainmast and the forecastle, from whence the boats and
cook's galley had been washed away. Jumping into the water at this
point, he swam towards the spot where he thought the entrance to the
forecastle should lie, for the sea was washing about forward, and
nothing to be seen above the surface but a small portion of the port
bulwarks near the dead-eyes of the fore-shrouds and a bit of the port
cat-head.
Jake then dived below the water, disappearing from our view for a few
seconds that seemed interminable as we waited.
"I hope he hasn't come to grief," said Captain Miles anxiously. "So
many things have been carried away and jumbled up in a mass there
forwards, that the poor fellow might get fixed in and be drowned,
without the chance of saving himself."
But his alarm was quite unnecessary, Jake rising above the water in
another moment and scrambling up into the main rigging, in a very
hurried manner, as if something was pursuing him.
His face as he turned it towards us was almost green | with fright, and
we could hear his teeth chattering | with fear and cold combined.
"Well," sang out Captain Miles, "I'm glad to see you out of that hole
alive. But, what's the matter, my man? have you got the axe?"
"N-n-n-no, Mass' Cap'en," stuttered Jake, making his way aft again along
the bulwarks, "got no axe nor nuffin'. Dere am duppy or de debbil in de
fo'c's'le. Bress de Lor', dis pore niggah only sabe him life an'--dat
all!"