SHE DESCRIBES A STORM
But now the storm was approaching, the moon’s light was growing weak
and the stars over our mastheads dim and spare. The lightning was
incessant; its flashes glanced into the remotest recesses of the north
and brought out the horizon there in gleams of sulphur. The hum of the
thunder was deep and ceaseless, with many savage cracks and rattling
peals. I cannot tell what progress the eclipse had made by this hour;
the moon hung distorted in the sky like a dim silver shield with its
sides hacked, and the night looked wild with her and the gathering
tempest.
I heard the commander of the ship address the doctor, who called
to the captains of the division to march the prisoners below; and
he added that the last of the divisions could not be brought up,
as sail was to be reduced and room was wanted. Moreover, in a very
short time the moon would have vanished. Now followed a lively time.
The prisoners’ inclosure being clear, Mr. Bates, at the head of the
poop-ladder, began to shout out orders; all hands were on deck and all
hands were wanted. ‘Clew up the royals and furl them! Down flying and
outer jibs and topgallant staysails! Clew up topgallant sails and furl
them! Main-clewgarnets and let the sail hang!’ So ran the orders; the
lightning played upon the figures of the seamen as they trotted aloft;
the moon turned a watery, silvery, oozing, draining through the film of
the advanced shadow of the storm, then vanished behind a jagged peak
of cloud, and the night-dye sank upon the ocean in deepest shadow, the
deeper for the play of the lightning; after each flash the blackness
thrilled with the blindness of the vision.
The women came off the forecastle, and I entered the cuddy. The steward
told me to turn up the lights, and Captain Barrett and Lieutenant
Chimmo, descending the companion-steps at that moment, called for
brandy and seltzer, which I procured for them. The steward bade me be
at hand; if there was a gale of wind in the storm, I, with the rest
of the ‘idlers,’ would be wanted. I hung about in the recess, and all
the time I wondered whether the convicts would rise in the morning,
whether their friends amongst the crew were to be depended upon;
whether this storm of thunder and lightning would work a change in the
prisoners’ intentions by terrifying them; and I also strove to imagine
the programme that had been concerted, what part the confederate
seamen were to play; whether the guard would find time to arm and turn
out, and if so, whether the uprising would not be suppressed by their
coolness and discipline and by the support of the loyal part of the
crew.
The storm was now overhead; the ship was clothed in lightning and the
thunder was deafening and frightful. The whole fabric trembled to
every explosion as though the broadside of a three-decker had been
fired into her. There was no wind. The men had come from aloft, and
the ship stood motionless and upright under her three topsails, the
courses hanging festooned in their gear. I crouched in a corner of
the recess, amazed and bewildered. I had always from a child been
frightened of lightning, and here now was lightning that was like one
vast sheet of flame; the heavens were sheeted with its blinding blaze;
it was so continuous that you saw the ship as by sunshine; the whole
vessel crackled with sparks and explosions, fireballs ran down the
chain-topsail sheets, played about the pumps, sparkled and snapped on
the boom-irons at the yardarms, and the sea that had been silent roared
back in echo to the thunder and spread out in a wide field of blue
light that came and went, sometimes showing in a leap of light that was
as the flash that it mirrored, then blackening for a breath or two,
during which you saw nothing but the fireballs running over the ship.
It rained and hailed suddenly with incredible fury. The decks smoked;
by the lightning flashes you saw the spray of the cataractal fall
rising like steam to above the height of a man. Just then the ship
was struck; I heard a crash and splintering on high, and a great bulb
of blue fire fell down the rigging over the side into the sea, where
it burst like an exploded cannon. The mate overhead shouted, and the
boatswain who was forward bawled in answer.
Captain Barrett and the subaltern stood at the cabin table; they had
emptied their tumblers and put down their cigars, and looked pale and
glanced often up at the skylight, into which the lightning streamed
in an almost continuous living dazzle. I hung in the cuddy door for
shelter from the smoking wet; a head showed in the booby-hatch and
cried out: ‘The doctor wants some brandy; bring down half a tumblerful
at once.’ I ran to the table, took a glass from a swing tray, and half
filled it with brandy. The steward at that moment coming up through
the steerage-hatch called to me: ‘Hi, you there! What are you about?
Liquoring up unbeknown instead of being at your prayers?’
Lieutenant Chimmo grinned dismally.
‘The doctor’s in the barracks and wants brandy,’ said I.
‘Curse it, what’s wrong?’ exclaimed Captain Barrett, and instantly ran
to the booby-hatch, followed by the subaltern.
‘Get on, then, get on!’ shouted Mr. Stiles, who had been drinking.
I ran with the brandy to the hatch, and seeing nobody to hand it
to, descended. The scene of this interior of bulkheaded steerage
was extraordinary; a lantern burnt dimly, its light was paled by
the electric fires, which sparkled all over the prison bulkhead as
though the wood was alive with the phosphoric lights of decay and
rot. The bulkhead was studded with mushroom-headed nails, and every
nail was tipped with fire. The sight was fearful; I thought the ship
was burning. The women and the children were gathered in a heap in
one corner, holding to one another, as though the vessel was about
to founder; no child cried; the roar of the thunder seemed to have
frightened the infants into silence.
A man lay on his back against the prison door, which was a little way
open; the doctor bent over him and Captain Barrett and the subaltern
stood close looking down. Such of the guard as were below were grouped
with the women and children; they seemed dazed. The prostrate man was a
soldier; doubtless the sentry stationed at the prison door. His musket,
with its fixed bayonet, lay at a little distance from him, and I saw
threads of fire writhing upon the bayonet.
‘Here’s the brandy!’ cried Captain Barrett.
The doctor looked up, and extended his hand for the glass. This brought
me close to the door, and for a minute or two I had a clear view of the
’tweendecks prison. The cage-like barricade at the main-hatch was full
of great nails, and every nail glowed as though red-hot. I don’t know
where the lightning found entrance. It flashed through the blackness
of this floating dungeon as if half a dozen hatches lay open to the
sky. Wherever there was iron for the electric fires to catch hold of a
small blue brilliant blaze was burning, inexpressibly wild and awful
to behold. I clearly saw the whole sweep of the deck--the tiers of
sleeping shelves stretching on either hand, the tables, the bulkhead
of the prison and whatever else there was of grim and odious furniture
in that interior. Numbers of the convicts lay motionless upon their
faces on the deck; many crouched in squatting postures, with their
hands to their heads; a few stood erect, defiant, as though waiting and
heedless of what was next to happen. One of these, I might be sure, was
Tom.
No imagination could feign the terror which the figures of the
prostrate and crouching convicts expressed. You needed to witness the
scene, as I did, by the terrific lights that illuminated the prison
and by the ceaseless glittering of the lightning streaming through the
interior in shocks and explosions of dazzling light. And the roar of
the thunder heard in this resonant cavity was more dreadful to listen
to than the stupendous voice of it on deck, whilst a deep and ceaseless
note was added to the detonations by the Niagara-like fall of hail and
rain upon the echoing planks.
‘Is he dead, doctor?’ asked Captain Barrett.
‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘Have this door shut, sir, and let another
sentry be posted. You can leave the brandy and go,’ said he to me; on
which I returned to the cuddy and stood as before near the doorway.
I believe this terrible storm had reached the height of its rage when
the ship was struck. Its fury was now waning, though the soot in
the north continued to vomit sheets of flame and the thunder-shocks
striking the level of the breathless sea were as the noise of the
rending of mountains. I have heard of but one such another storm
in which a convict ship bore part. The vessel was the _Earl Grey_,
with two hundred and sixty-four prisoners on board. The year was, I
believe, 1842, and the ship was bound, as the _Childe Harold_ was, to
Van Diemen’s Land. Dr. Browning, who was the surgeon-superintendent,
mentions the storm in his account of the voyage, but he saw nothing of
it, owing to his suffering from an affection of the heart which obliged
him to keep his cabin. This I regret, as I should have been glad to
know how the prisoners under his charge behaved on that occasion.
It was now about a quarter to eleven; the rain had ceased, but the
decks were full of water, which cascaded continuously into the calm sea
through the scupper-holes. The captain and his mates kept the poop. I
heard the squelch of their tread as they tramped to and fro in their
sodden boots. Suddenly an order was shouted, and in a few minutes two
or three men came aft, one of them holding a lantern. They gathered
about the pump and the second mate left the poop and joined them. I
could not see what they did, but after a short interval the second mate
went on the poop again, and the men, one of them swinging the lantern,
walked forward.
A little clock hung under the break of the poop in the cuddy recess
hard by the soldiers’ arms; a bull’s-eye lamp cast a light upon its
face; this lamp was used for heaving the log, for writing up the
log-slate and the like, and the clock for keeping the ship’s bells. A
figure came off the poop to see the time; he was draped in streaming
oilskins, which flashed out to the lightning, but his face was so
muffled by his sou’-wester, that I looked two or three times before
I knew him to be Will. I was still alone in the cuddy; Frank and the
steward were probably in the steerage; I took a step or two that
carried me to the door and pronounced Will’s name.
He drew close and said: ‘What do you think of this?’
‘It is awful,’ said I.
‘It might have been worse than awful!’ he exclaimed. ‘The ship has been
struck! Luckily, the thunderbolt went overboard. Had it gone through
the bottom we should have followed it; nothing could have saved us. But
it’s all right with the old hooker; the well’s just been sounded again
and she’s as dry as a rotten nut.’
I looked at him eagerly; my heart all at once grew so full, that I felt
I must speak or shriek out; I set my teeth on my lip and bit till I
tasted blood, and clenched my hands till my arms stiffened as though I
had been poisoned, whilst I turned my head that he might not see me.
He said: ‘I must be off. Why don’t you go to bed? There’s nothing to
keep you up. A fine night’ll be coming along by eight bells and they’ll
be making sail.’ With that he went up the ladder.
I had barely arrested speech in myself: but for that supreme effort I
should have warned him, and he would at once have carried the news to
the captain.
I stood in the door, gazing at the ship that flashed out and vanished,
no longer scared by the flames and the thunder. I could think of
nothing but what to-morrow was to bring forth. Men in scores lay below
in the prison quarter, stricken into motionless logs by fright. Were
they and the like of them capable of a victorious uprising? And suppose
the ship seized, what was to follow? I dared not think how the convicts
might serve those who were not of them. I asked myself: If they put
Tom in charge of the ship, what will he do with her, and how will he
act so as to escape from the ruffians and secure his own liberty? Then
I thought to myself: he is an innocent man now, though suffering as
a criminal; but if the ship is seized by the convicts, he’ll be taken
as having helped them, as being one of the two hundred and thirty,
as being the one who navigated the ship afterwards, and who was as
answerable as any of the rest for all that happened. He will then be
a criminal in terrible earnest. Indeed, the business might bring him
to the gallows. But then, thought I, he is a convict now in any case.
He cannot be worse off. He never can--he never would--return home.
Whatever happens cannot blacken his future. The darkness over which
that lightning is flashing is not deeper. If the convicts rise, he may
escape and get his liberty, free himself from his felon clothes, and
hide with a changed name in a foreign country. Oh, cried my heart, God
grant that I may be spared to escape with him wherever he goes!
Thus ran my thoughts. After all these years, I put them dully and
coldly; but they boiled in me then. They were as the electric fluid
itself whilst I stood in the doorway of that cuddy, mechanically
watching the great fabric of the ship glancing out green and violet
and yellow to the lights of the storm over the bow.
Shortly after eleven the sky cleared in the south; the clouds rolled
away in black masses into the north, and the moon shone out, and the
sea was again beautiful with her light. A soft wind blew and the decks
grew busy with the life of seamen’s figures running here and there,
and pulling and dragging and making sail to the noise of hoarse cries
and choruses. The steward lurched up to me, and his breath filled the
atmosphere around with a smell of spirits. He said, with a hiccough:
‘You can turn in.’ So I went below and lay down, fully clothed, in my
bunk, but not to sleep.