The hull had a desperately wrecked look inboards with the mess of ropes,
staves, jagged ends, crushed rails, rents manifesting the fury of the
hurricane. I swept a glance along in expectation of beholding a dead
body, or if you will, some scarcely living though yet breathing man; but
nothing of the kind was to be seen. The mate hung his head over the
companion hatch from which the cover had been clean razed and peered
down, then shouted and listened. But no other sound followed than the
long moan and huge washing sob of the swell brimming to the wash-streak
with a dim sort of choking, gurgling noise as of water streaming from
side to side in the hold.
“Hardly worth while exploring those moist bowels, I think, sir,” said
the mate.
“Oh, yes,” said I, “if we don’t take a peep under deck what will there
be to tell? This is a quest of the ladies’ making, remember, and it must
be a complete thing or ‘stand by,’ as you sailors say.”
“Right you are, sir,” said he, “and so here goes,” and with that he put
his foot upon the companion ladder and dropped into the cabin.
I followed at his heels, and both of us came to a stand at the bottom of
the steps whilst we stared round. There was plenty of light to see by
streaming down through the skylight aperture and the hatch. The cabin
was a plain, snuff-colored room with a few sleeping berths running
forward, a rough table somewhat hacked and cut about as if with the
slicing of tobacco, a row of lockers on either hand, a stand of
firearms right aft and some twenty cutlasses curiously stowed in a sort
of bracket under the ceiling or upper deck. Hot as it was above, the
cabin struck chill as though it were an old well. Indeed you saw that it
had been soused over and over again by the seas which had swept the
vessel, and there was a briny, seaweedy flavor in the atmosphere of it
that made you think of a cave deep down in a sea-fronting cliff. We
looked into the sleeping berths going forward to where a movable
bulkhead stopped the road. It was not easy to walk; the increasing
weight of the swell was defined by the heavy though comparatively
buoyant rolling of the hull. The deck went in slopes like the roof of a
house from side to side with now and again an ugly jerk that more than
once came near to throwing me when a sudden yawn forced the dismasted
fabric into a swift recovery.
“There’s nobody aft here, anyway,” said the mate; “no use troubling
ourselves to look for her papers, I think, sir.”
“No; but this is only one end of the ship,” I answered. “There may be a
discovery to make forward. Can’t we unship that bulkhead there, and so
get into the ’tween-decks?”
We laid hold of the frame, and after peering a bit, for this part of the
cabin lay in gloom, we found that it stood in grooves, and without much
trouble we slided it open, and the interior to as far as a bulkhead that
walled off a bit of forecastle lay clear before us in the daylight
shining through the main-hatch. Here were a number of hammocks dangling
from the deck, and some score or more of seamen’s chests and bags in
heaps, some of them split open, with quantities of rough wearing apparel
scattered about, insomuch that I never could have imagined a scene of
wilder disorder, nor one more suggestive of hurry and panical
consternation and delirious headlong behavior.
“Nobody here, sir,” said the mate.
“No,” I answered; “I suppose her people left her in their boats, and
that one of the wretches who were forced to remain behind wrote the
letter we received the other night.”
“At sea,” said the mate, “there is no imagining how matters come about.
I allow that the three men have been taken off by some passing vessel.
Anyway, we’ve done our bit, and the capt’n I expect’ll be waiting for
us. Thunder! how she rolls,” he cried, as a very heavy lurch sent us
both reeling towards the side of the craft.
“Hark!” cried I, “we are hailed from the deck.”
“Below there!” shouted a voice in the companion hatch. “They’ve fired a
gun aboard the Indiaman, sir, and have run the ensign up half-masted.
The weather looks mighty queer, sir.”
“Ha!” cried the mate; “come along, Mr. Catesby.”
We walked cautiously and with difficulty aft, gained the companion
ladder and ascended. My instant glance went to the _Ruby_. She had
furled her mainsail and fore and mizzen top-gallant-sails, hauled down
her lighter staysails and big standing jib, and as I glanced at her a
gun winked in a quarter-deck port, and the small thunder of it rolled
sulkily up against the wind. In fact, whilst we were below the breeze
had chopped clean round and the _Ruby_ was to leeward of the wreck, with
a very heavy swell rolling along its former course, the wind dead the
other way, beginning to whiten the ridges on each huge round-backed
fold, and a white thickness--a flying squall of vapor it looked to me,
with a seething and creaming line of water along the base of it as
though it was something solid that was coming along--sweeping within
half-a-mile of the wreck right down upon us. The mate sent a look at it
and uttered a cry.
“Haul the boat alongside,” he shouted to the fellow in her. “Handsomely
now, lads. Stand by to jump into her,” he cried to the seaman who had
been the first to spring on board the wreck with the end of the line.
They brought the boat humming and buzzing to the counter; the sailor
standing on the taffrail plumped into her like a cannon-shot; ’twas
wonderful he didn’t scuttle her. The mate whipping the painter off the
pin or whatever it was that it had been belayed to held it by a turn
whilst he bawled to me to watch my chance and jump. But the wreck lying
dead in the trough was rolling in quite a frenzied way, like a see-saw
desperately worked. Her movements, combined with the soaring and falling
of the boat, were absolutely confounding. I would gather myself together
for a spring and then, before I could make it, the boat was sliding as
it might seem to me twenty or thirty feet deep and away.
“Jump, for God’s sake, sir!” cried the mate.
“I don’t mean to break my neck,” I answered, irritable with the nervous
flurry that had come to me with a sudden abominable sense of incapacity
and helplessness.
As I spoke the words, sweep! came the white smother off the sea over us
with a spiteful yell of wind of a weight that smote the cheek a blow
which might have forced the strongest to turn his back. The hissing, and
seething, and crackling of the spume of the first of the squall was all
about us in a breath, and in the beat of a heart to the _Ruby_, and the
ocean all her way vanished in the wild and terrifying eclipse of the
thick, silvery, howling, steam-like mist.
“By ----, I have done it _now_!” cried the mate.
The end of the painter had been dragged from his hand or he had let it
fall! And the wind catching the boat blew her over the swell like the
shadow of a cloud. The seamen threw their oars over and headed for us,
their faces pale as those of madmen.
“They’ll never stem this weather,” cried the mate, “follow me, Mr.
Catesby, or we are dead men.”
He tore off his coat, kicked off his boots and went overboard without
another word.
_Follow him!_ To the bottom, indeed! but nowhere else, for I could not
swim a stroke. But that was not quite it. Had I had my senses I might
have grasped the first piece of wreckage I could put my hand upon and
gone after him with it to paddle and hold on till I was picked up. But
all this business coming upon us so suddenly, along with the sudden
blinding of me by the vapor, the distracting yelling of the wind and the
sickening bewilderment caused by the wreck’s violent rolling, seemed to
have driven all my wits clean out of my head. The boat was scarcely more
than a smudge in the thickness, vanishing and showing as she swept up
and rushed down the liquid acclivities, held with her bow towards the
hulk by the desperately-plied oars of the rowers. The mate was borne
down rapidly towards her. I could just see three of the sailors leaning
over the side to drag him out of the water; the next instant the little
fabric had vanished in the thickness, helplessly and with horrible
rapidity blown out of sight the moment the men ceased rowing to rescue
their officer.
I do not know how long all this may have occupied; a few minutes maybe
sufficed for the whole of the tragic passage. I stood staring and
staring, incredulous of the truth of what had befallen me, and then with
an inexpressible sickness of heart I flung myself down upon the deck
under the lee of a little space of bulwark, too dizzy and weak with the
horror that possessed me to maintain my footing on that wildly swaying
platform.