"Cut it, for God's sake, cut it!" I roared, and Dobson hacked away at
one of the thick ropes. Whilst he was sawing away--his knife was blunt
and would not cut--Jaffa, quick as lightning, pulled out his Mauser
pistol, put the muzzle up against the rope, and fired in quick
succession.
With a leap and a shriek the rope gave way, the running parts lashed
through the sheaves of the "purchase", the sail flew out to leeward, and
the dhow began to right herself, shaking the water from her like a dog.
Thank God we had not opened the hatch cover! If we had done so we
should have sunk like a stone.
As it was, we were in a bad enough plight. The huge sail was beating
madly, one second half-buried in the sea, the next whirled as high as
the masthead, and cracking with a noise like thunder, the big block on
the standing part of the main sheet attached to the sail being hurled
about like a stone on the end of a rope. This block kept on sweeping
over the stern, where we were taking shelter, splintering the railings
like matchwood, and it was all we could do to dodge it. If it had
struck anyone, that would have been the last of him.
Perhaps, for most of the time, the sail, or the lower part, was in the
water, and the dhow could not lift it out or herself on an even keel;
like a huge bird, with one wing broken, we went rolling and reeling to
leeward, waiting for the mast to carry away.
To have attempted to drag the sail on board and smother it would have
been sheer lunacy, even if we had twenty men to do it. It would have
been as easy to try to stop a wounded elephant tearing up trees round
him by lassoing his trunk with twine.
To add to our troubles, the seas were beating against the rudder, which
was wrestling with the tiller ropes and trying to shake itself free.
Jask! I wasn't thinking of Jask then, or of Mr. Scarlett and the
_Bunder Abbas_. What was to happen in the next half-minute was quite
enough for me. We could not stand without clinging to something, the
dhow was lurching too much, and sea after sea, four or five feet deep,
in foaming cataracts, poured over the dhow's waist.
We had to do something: we tried to lower the big yard, struggling
waist-deep in the sea to reach the foot of the mast, where those poor
wretches of Arabs, in the last stage of fright, were clinging for dear
life. We could not move it or its clumsy rope "sleeve", securing it to
the mast, and Wiggins was banged against the mast by a wave--flattened
against it like a fly on a wall. It was all we could do to prevent his
being washed overboard. He broke two ribs, though we did not know that
until afterwards.
As we scrambled back to the poop we saw the rudder head wrench itself
free from the tiller ropes, and to the noise of the gale and the
thundering of that mad sail now came the grinding noise of the rudder
breaking itself to pieces under the stern. Thank goodness, it broke away
before it had knocked a hole in our bottom, floating up and threatening
to come inboard on the top of the next wave. However, we drifted away
from it like a feather from a piece of seaweed, and had soon left it out
of sight.
Why that mast did not go over the side I cannot think. The strain on it
and the weather shrouds must have been enormous.
If it had broken we should have been perfectly helpless, and the
end--well, as I said before, we were too busy with each succeeding
half-minute to worry about anything beyond that.
We were drifting to leeward at a tremendous rate; Kuh-i-Mubarak was
below the horizon, and the gale showed no signs of lessening.
"If this goes on much longer we'll find ourselves blown a hundred miles
out to sea," Dobson roared in my ear. "We'd best cut away the mast.
She'll ride more easy and won't drift so quick."
I looked to wind'ard. Even though the gale howled as fiercely as ever,
the sky showed signs of clearing; the line of the horizon was certainly
clearer than it had been the last time I looked. I knew that these
gales often died down as quickly as they rose; the fiercer they were the
quicker over, and I still hoped to sail into Jask. I even began to
think how best to rig a "jury" rudder.
So I shook my head at Dobson, and determined to keep the mast unless
things became worse, and we hung on, dodging the waves and the block on
that main sheet.
Presently the sail began to give way, great rents showing in it when it
lifted, spreading and ripping, and flying to leeward in long streamers,
which one by one tore themselves clear and spun madly down wind.
As each strip parted it eased the strain, until, after a time, the dhow
came on a more even keel, and in the hollows of the seas wallowed less
deeply.
Somehow or other we felt that the worst was over, and began to look
round us and shift into more comfortable positions. The old
nakhoda--half-drowned he was--began to recover consciousness, and the
Arabs ventured a little farther aft, crouching for shelter under the
weather gunwale.
There was now no sign whatever of the _Bunder Abbas_--we had drifted out
of sight of her long ago--but the sky overhead was clearing; large blue
patches showed between the clouds, and though the gale still shrieked
down on us with unabated violence, our spirits rose considerably.
The edge of civilization! Yes, I was there, with a vengeance! What an
extraordinary change seven weeks had made, after my long seven years in
home waters! I could not help picturing the Channel Squadron anchored,
as I last saw it, under Portland Bill, and wondered whether it was still
there, thanking Heaven that I was not keeping a monotonous day "on".
To make things still more comfortable for us, that big wooden block, in
a last furious endeavour to dash our brains out, banged itself to pieces
against a big wooden bollard on the poop, so we had no longer to dodge
it. But to level up things we began to realize how horribly thirsty we
were. We found some water, or rather Jaffa found some, under the poop,
in an old kerosene tin. It tasted horrid, and was so brackish that it
did little to quench our thirst. My head, too, now that I had not so
much to think about, began to throb and ache. Wiggins began to complain
of his side.
"We've got to stick it out, that's all," I called to them; and Dobson
smiled cheerily, shouting back that he thought "this 'ere shamel
wouldn't last long; it was too blooming strong at the start."
He talked about a shamel as if it was an old acquaintance--sometimes in
a good, but now in a very bad temper.
I began to feel that the wind was not so strong; waves were certainly
not breaking over the dhow so frequently nor with so much force. The
lee gunwale was well clear of the sea.
I thought that now it might be possible to capture the remnants of that
sail, so, making a rope fast round my waist, and telling Dobson to come
with me, I scrambled to the foot of the mast. Whilst he stood by to
"pay out" I chose a moment when the big yard over my head was still,
climbed on to it, swung myself across it, and, holding on with arms and
legs, worked my way along it slowly. It tried to shake me off every
half-minute. Once it managed to get rid of my knees, whilst I clung
like grim death, my legs dangling almost in the water. Then it tossed
me like a feather, and I caught it again with my knees, waiting a moment
till it was possible to wriggle along still farther. I managed to crawl
almost twenty feet from the mast. That was far enough for my purpose.
I wanted to secure my rope to it there--the rope round my waist--but
that was the trouble; directly I let go with one hand, off I was jerked,
just as if the beastly sail and yard were waiting their opportunity.
For a second I hung by one arm, my body actually in the water, then the
sail, billowing up, lifted me with it, and I clung to that yard like a
fly. There was a gap just below me, beneath the yard, where the sail
had torn itself away from its lashing. I wriggled through it and over
the yard again, the rope of course coming along after me, and by waiting
my opportunity I managed another wriggle round the yard. There I was,
with a turn of the rope round it and myself, secured to it like a pig
lashed to a pole. However, I could not be jerked off and could use one
hand. Looking down I saw Dobson yelling encouragement; the Arabs were
looking at me with frightened faces.
Dobson paid out the rope very handsomely, and in a couple of minutes I
managed to take another turn round the yard, secure it, and unlash
myself. Then, shinning and clinging like a limpet as the yard waved
about, wriggling backwards when it was quiet, I managed to reach the
mast and clambered down on deck.
"That's done 'im in the eye right enough!" Dobson shouted
enthusiastically, as he grabbed me by the feet. '"Im" was the shamel.
Together we led that rope aft, passed it through a block under the lee
gunwale, took a turn round a cleat, and the four of us tried to haul the
yard on board, hauling for all we were worth.
[Illustration: THE FOUR OF US TRIED TO HAUL THE YARD AND SAIL ON BOARD,
HAULING FOR ALL WE WERE WORTH.]
We won a few inches at a time, between squalls, and another turn round
the cleat would prevent the yard dragging them out again. Slowly, inch
by inch, the end of it came closer to us, and at every inch the dhow
would heel over a little more. However, I knew how much she would stand
by now, so cared not a jot.
However, at last the yard and sail beat us. It was all we could do to
hold in what we had won; not another inch could we gain. Then, to our
intense delight, the six Arabs came aft and clapped on too.
"Go it, lads!" I yelled, and, working like one man, we pulled the yard
towards us until the peak of it was close to the railings round the
stern.
Dobson scrambled up with a coil of rope, lassoed it, and captured it for
good and all.
It was grand.
"Now lower it!" I yelled, and we scrambled for'ard to the mast, Arabs
and all, slacked off the main halyards, and down it slid.
The remnant of the sail made a last attempt to escape, then draggled
over the lee side, hanging down in the water--beaten.
No one wanted an order; Dobson, Wiggins, Jaffa, and myself, and every
one of those Arabs, flung ourselves on to it to prevent it filling
again, clutching and pulling till, in a minute or two, it was all on
board, lashed to the yard, and as harmless as a handkerchief.
The dhow now came on a level keel, and, her stern paying off before the
wind, our bows pointed into the sea. You can imagine what a relief this
was after we had been rolling over on our beam-ends for so long.
However, she could not face the seas, and we were soon being spun round
and round again.
"A sea-anchor; that's what she wants!" Dobson shouted. "That'll steady
her, sir; she'll be like a cradle when she's got one."
There was plenty of timber on the fore hatch, so we unlashed it, and,
making half a dozen long balks fast to a big grass hawser we found in
the bows, we tipped them overboard, or allowed the seas to wash them
overboard--whichever happened first--one after the other. As the dhow
drifted to leeward so much faster than they did, the hawser soon
tautened out, and brought our bows round into the wind.
Jolly proud we all were of that sea-anchor. It sounds easy enough to
make, but if you had seen us trying to prevent those planks and balks of
timber taking "charge" whilst we were passing the grass hawser round
each one singly, leaping away as they tore themselves out of our hands
and tried to break our legs, you would realize that it was not the
simple matter it sounds.
We must have been struggling with it for at least an hour, up to our
waists in water most of that time, and were thoroughly exhausted by the
time we had paid out the whole of the hawser.
But we were now riding head to sea, our decks were not washed by the
waves, and when we gathered on the poop to rest after our exhausting
work we were as comfortable, as Dobson said, "as fleas in a blanket".
*CHAPTER V*
*My First Capture*
With that sea-anchor keeping our bows up to wind'ard, the worst of our
troubles seemed to be over. My wrist watch had been broken in that first
melee, so we did not know what time it was. From the height of the sun
we guessed it to be nearly noon.
I climbed to the mast head. Not a sign of the _Bunder Abbas_ could I
see; in fact, the whole circle of the horizon was empty but for
ourselves, and as there was absolutely nothing to be done (for it would
have been madness to hoist a scrap of sail, and as for trying to make a
jury-rudder, we simply could not have done it whilst we were pitching
and tossing so violently) we four sat comfortably on the poop, dried
ourselves, and watched the Arabs squatting close to the foot of the
mast. They had asked Jaffa's permission to search for food, and had
found some dried dates. They seemed to enjoy them, and the sight of food
of any sort made us remember that we had not had any that day, and that
we were as hungry as hunters.
Jaffa found a large store of these dates under the poop, and, though
they looked unappetizing to a degree, we enjoyed them hugely, washing
them down with another drink out of that kerosene tin.