AN ICY STORM OFF “SUNNY” BATON ROUGE
On the alert but motionless, the four boys waited for a repetition of
the strange noise, wondering what it meant. The wind still shrieked; all
the pandemonium of sound continued, but the queer sound was not
repeated, neither was the unusual jar.
Kenneth was the first to move. He jumped to the companionway, and pushed
at the hinged doors leading on deck, but they did not move. Glued with
the frost, they refused to open. He put his shoulder against them, and
pushed with all his might. The expected happened—the doors opened
suddenly, and Kenneth found himself sprawling on the floor of the
cockpit. He skinned his shin on the brass-bound step of the companionway
ladder, and his funny bone tingled from a blow it got on the deck. The
boy tried to rise to his feet, but a sudden swing of the boat made him
slip on the icy boards and fall swiftly down again. From his prone
position, he looked around him. The light coming up through the open
companionway gleamed yellow on the ice-coated, glistening boom, and the
furled sail propped up in the crotch. As Ransom’s eyes became accustomed
to the darkness, he saw what it was that had startled them all. “His
Nibs,” hauled up on the narrow strip of deck aft of the rudder post, had
slipped when the “Gazelle” had made a sudden plunge, and sliding on the
icy rail had thumped into the cockpit. Perfectly safe, but ludicrously
out of place, the little boat looked like a big St. Bernard in a lady’s
lap.
“Look!” the prostrate captain called to his friends. “‘His Nibs’ was
getting lonesome and was coming down into the cabin for the sake of
sociability.”
The other three crawled on deck, having learned caution through the
skipper’s mishap, and crouched in the wet, slippery cockpit while they
looked around.
The gale, still increasing rather than abating, was raising tremendous
seas. The “Gazelle” rolled, her rails under at times, and her bowsprit
jabbed the white-capped waves.
“I am going forward to see if the anchors are O. K.” Kenneth spoke
loudly enough, but the wind snatched the words from his mouth and the
boys did not hear what he said.
Ransom managed to get on his feet, and, grasping the beading of the
cabin, he pulled himself erect. A quick lurch almost threw him
overboard, but he reached up and grabbed the boom overhead just in time.
Holding on to this with both arms, he slowly worked himself forward.
The other boys, crouching in the cockpit, wondered what he was up to.
They watched his dim figure crawling painfully along, and once their
hearts came into their throats as, his feet slipping from under him, he
hung for an instant from the icy boom almost directly over the raging
river. The light streaming from the cabin shone into their strained,
anxious faces and blinded them so that they could hardly see the figure
of “Ken,” on whom they had learned to rely. At last he disappeared
altogether behind the mast and was swallowed up in the blackness.
“Ken! Come back! Come back!” Arthur, who was still weak, could not stand
the strain; he could not bear to think of what might happen to his
friend.
The wind shrieked in derision—so, at least, it seemed to the anxious
boy—the elements combined to drown his voice. The gale howled on; the
rain froze as it fell, and the waves dashed at the boys like fierce dogs
foaming at the mouth.
Frank, at last feeling that he must know what had become of Ransom,
sprang up, and grasping the icy spar, crept forward. Many times he lost
his foothold, but always managed somehow to catch himself in time.
Slipping and sliding, fighting the gale, he reached the mast. The
journey was one of only twenty feet, but the gale was so fierce and the
exertion of keeping his footing so great that he arrived at the end of
it out of breath and almost exhausted. It was inky black, and only with
difficulty could he distinguish the familiar objects on the
forecastle—the bitts, and the two rigid anchor cables leading from it.
Lying across them was Kenneth, gripping one, while the yacht’s bow rose
and fell, dashing the spray clear over his prostrate figure.
“What’s the matter, Ken?” Frank shouted, so as to be heard above the
wind. “Are you hurt? Brace up, old man!”
The other did not speak for a minute; then he answered in a strained
voice: “Give me a hand, old chap, will you? I’ve hurt my foot—wrenched
it, I guess; pains like blazes.”
That he was pretty badly hurt, Frank guessed by the way in which he drew
in his breath as he shifted his position.
“Got a good hold there, Frank? Grab those halliards. It’s terrible
slippery—Ouch! Easy, now.”
It was a difficult job that Frank had in hand. The ice-covered decks
could not be depended on at all; if the boys began to slide, they would
slip right off the sloping cabin roof into the water; the boat was
jumping on the choppy seas like a bucking horse, and the wind blew with
hurricane force. Kenneth could help himself hardly at all, and Frank
struggled with him till the sweat stood out on his brow in great beads.
At last both got over the entangling anchor cables, and breathing hard,
hugged the stick as if their lives depended on it, which came very near
being the case.
“You—had—better—leave—me—here—old—chap,” panted Kenneth.
“My—ankle—hurts—like—the—old—Harry. Can’t—travel—much.”
“What did you do to it?”
“Got—caught—under—cleat—on—the butt—of—the—bowsprit.”
“Gee! that’s tough!” sympathized Frank.
“Gave it a terrible wrench. Regular monkey wrench.” It was a grim
situation to joke about.
“Leave you here?” said Frank, coming back to Ken’s suggestion. “I guess
not! What do you take me for, anyway? I know how to work it, all right.
You hang on to the mast a minute.”
Releasing his grip on Ransom, Chauvet picked up the end of the peak
halliard coiled at his feet, and with great difficulty straightened out
its frozen turns, for he had but one free hand—he could not release his
hold on the sailhoop that he grasped for an instant. Taking the stiff
line, he passed it around his body and then around the boom. Holding on
by his legs to the mast, he worked away at the frozen line until he had
knotted the end to the main part—made a bowline. The loop was around his
waist and the boom.
“Now, Ken, we’re all right—I have lashed myself to this spar, and my
hands are free. I’ll yell to Clyde,” and suiting the action to the word
he shouted aft.
Ransom hung on to the line about Frank’s waist, while Frank half held,
half supported him. Slowly they moved along, stumbling, often swinging
with the boat, till the rope cut into Chauvet’s body cruelly. It was
exhausting work.
Soon Clyde came stumbling, slipping and fighting forward against the
gale, and in a minute was helping Frank to support the gritty captain.
It was a thankful group that dropped into the warm, bright
cabin—dripping wet and numbed with cold, out of breath, well-nigh
exhausted, but thankful to the heart’s core.
Arthur cut the shoe from Ransom’s swelling ankle, and then bound it
tightly with a cloth saturated with witch hazel.
“Chasing anchors on stormy nights seems to be fatal for me,” Kenneth
remarked, as he lay on his bunk regarding his bandaged foot. “I’ll give
you fellows a chance next time—I don’t want to be piggish about it.”
Presently the cabin light was turned down and all hands got into their
berths. Not a tongue moved, but brains were active; not an eyelid felt
heavy, but the boys resolutely kept them closed. The storm raged on;
gust succeeded gust, the rain beat down on the thin cabin roof with
increasing fierceness. It was a trying night, and each of the four boys
was glad enough to see the gray light come stealing in through the
frosted port lights. They had all thought that they would never see
daylight again, though each had kept his fears to himself.
The wind still roared and the rain poured down, but the yacht tossed and
rolled less violently; her movements were slower and sluggish, quite
unlike those of the usually sprightly, light “Gazelle.”
“Sea must have gone down,” commented Clyde, in a casual way, as he noted
that the others were awake. “Queer, wind’s blowing great guns, too.”
Kenneth sat up suddenly and bumped his head on the deck beam above. This
made him wince, and he drew his game foot suddenly against the boat’s
side. Kenneth made so wry a face that his friends could not help
laughing outright—an honest laugh, in spite of the sympathy they felt.
“Both ends at once.” The captain tried to rub his head and his ankle at
the same moment, and found it a good deal of a stretch.
“There is a new bar to be charted here.” His finger went gingerly round
the bump on his forehead.
“Frank, go on deck, will you, and see if things are moderating. I’d like
to get into some cove or another.”
Chauvet made his way to the ladder and shoved the doors with all his
might; but it was only after repeated blows with a heavy rope fender
that they opened.
“Great Scott!” he shouted. “Look here. Ice! Why, there’s no boat
left—it’s all ice! Well, I’ll be switched—why, we’ll have to chop her
out, or she’ll sink with the weight of it—she’s down by the head now.”
Fresh exclamations of amazement followed as each head appeared in turn
from below. It was true. The yacht was literally covered with ice, from
one to six inches thick at the bow, where the spray combined with the
rain to add to the layers of white coating. The sluggish movement of the
vessel was explained—the weight of the ice burdened her. Here was a
pleasing condition of things.
The boys snatched a hasty breakfast, and taking hatchets,
hammers—anything with a sharp edge—they attacked the ice. Even Ransom
insisted upon taking a hand. The boat was very beautiful in her glassy
coating. The rigging, fringed with icicles, and the cold, gray light
shining on the polished surface, made it look like a dull jewel. The
boys, however, saw nothing of the beautiful side of it. There was a
mighty job before them; a cold, hard, dangerous job, and they went at it
as they had done with all the previous difficulties which they had
encountered—with courage and energy.
Colder and colder it grew, until the thermometer registered five degrees
below zero. The yacht still rolled and pitched so that the boys found it
necessary to lash themselves to mast, spars and rigging while they
chopped. The spray flew up and dashed into their faces and almost
instantly froze; the sleeves of their coats became as hard and as stiff
as iron pipes, and their hands stiffened so that the fingers could not
hold the axe helves. Every few minutes one or the other would have to
stop, go below and thaw out. They worked desperately, but new layers of
frost formed almost as fast as the boys could hack it off. But chop and
shovel they must or sink in plain sight of the town, inaccessible as
though the boat were miles from shore.
How they ever lived through the three days during which the storm
continued, God, who saved them, alone knows. It seemed almost a miracle
that so small a craft should have lived through what it did.
When at the end of the weary time the wind subsided, the yacht rode over
the choppy waves in much the same buoyant way as before—she was weather
proof; but her crew was utterly exhausted; hands and faces were cut and
bleeding from the fierce onslaught of the sleet-laden wind; fingers,
toes and ears were frost-bitten, innumerable bruises—true badges of
honor—covered their bodies, and the captain suffered intolerably from
his injured ankle.
“Hours chopping ice off the ‘Gazelle’ to keep her from sinking under the
weight of it,” quoted Kenneth from the entry in his log. “And this in
the heart of the ‘Sunny South.’”
“I don’t believe there is any ‘Sunny South.’” Clyde was tired out, and
his sentiments expressed his condition.
“Remember the old coon at Natchez?” said Frank. “He must have been a
twin of Methuselah; he said he had never seen ice on the river so far
south before, and he had lived on the Mississippi all his life.”
It was many, many hours before the “Gazelle” was free enough of her
burden to allow the crew to rest; and not until three days of gale had
spent its spite upon them could she be got under way and anchored in a
sheltered spot.
After sending reassuring letters to anxious ones at home, the “Gazelle”
sped southward, seeking for a sheltered spot to lie by and allow the ice
which was sure to follow to pass by.
At the little town of St. Gabriels the “Gazelle” found a snug nest,
where, for a time, the ice ceased from troubling, and she floated
secure.
It was with a grateful heart that Kenneth rose on Sunday morning,
February 19th, and from the safe anchorage saw the great cakes of ice go
racing by on the swift current.
“We can’t hold a service aboard,” he said to Arthur, who appeared on
deck about the same time. “But let’s dress ship for a thanksgiving
offering.”
All four agreed with alacrity, and for the next hour scarcely a word was
spoken except as one fellow sung out, “Where is that swab?” or another,
“Who’s got the bath-brick?” Hardly a day passed (except when the boat
was in actual danger) that the “Gazelle” did not get a thorough
cleaning—brasses shined, decks scrubbed, cabin scoured, bedding aired,
dishes well washed and even the dishcloth cleaned and spread to dry. But
this was a special day, and the yacht was as sweet within as soap and
water, elbow grease and determined wills could make her. The crowning of
the work came when the “Gazelle” was decked in her colors; the flags
spelling her name in the international code fluttering in the breeze,
and above all Old Glory—surely a splendid emblem of what these
youngsters gallantly typified, American perseverance, pluck and
enterprise. It was a proud crew that lined up on the bank to admire
their achievement, and their hearts were filled with gratitude to
Providence that they had been brought through so many dangers safely.
“Kin I hab one of dese yer flags?” Some one pulled at Kenneth’s sleeve,
and he looked down into a small, black, kinky-hair framed face. It was a
little pickaninny, scantily clad and shivering in the keen air.
“What do you want it for?”
Embarrassment showed on every shining feature of the little face.
“Foh—foh a crazy quilt,” she managed to say at last.
Ransom could not spare one of his flags, but he dug into a locker and
pulled out a piece of red flannel (a token of his mother’s
thoughtfulness) which pleased the black youngster almost as much. The
visits of the darky population were frequent that day, and the many
requests for “one of doze flags” suggested the thought that the first
black youngster had spread the news that the ship’s company could be
worked.
Two days later the ice had almost disappeared and the “Gazelle” left her
snug berth for the last stretch of her journey to the Crescent City. The
delay seemed to add to the yacht’s eagerness to be gone, for she sped on
her way like a horse on its first gallop after a winter in the stable.
On, on she flew, drawing nearer to her goal, scarred from contact with
ice, snags and sandbars, but still unhurt, triumphant. Surely the sun
was rewarding their persistence; for he no longer hid his face from
them, but shone out in all mellowness and geniality. Their worries fled
at his warm touch, and their hearts sang his praises.
The “Gazelle” seemed glad as she forged ahead, as if to say, “Hurrah! I
have conquered, I have stood old Mississippi’s bumps and jars! All these
are of the past, and now for Old Ocean!”
Light after light was passed and marked off on the list, and soon the
last one shone out. It had no name, so as they lustily gave three cheers
for the last of the little beacons which had so long been their guides
and dubbed it “Omega,” the “Gazelle” sped on with only the smoke of the
great cotton market as a guide. New Orleans was in sight.
The pillars of smoke—the smoke of the city of their dreams—led them on.
They could hardly realize that that dim cloud, that dark streak in the
distance was really the city which they had striven so hard to reach.
A feeling of great satisfaction came over them as the “Gazelle”
responded to the tiller, which was thrown hard down, and headed into the
wind. A few flaps of the sails in the evening breeze, the sudden splash
of the anchor forward, followed by the swir of the cable as it ran
through the chocks, and the creaking pulleys as the sails were lowered,
was the music in honor of the “Gazelle’s” successful voyage from far
away Michigan to New Orleans.
The trip of one thousand eight hundred miles had been full of incident
and some satisfaction, purchased, however, at the price of severe toil
and many hardships, with a decided preponderance of troubles over
pleasures. Sickness had visited the crew at a time when their location
made medical aid impossible; the most severe winter recorded,
accompanied with the ice packs and low stages of water, made it seem
many times as if all hands were indeed candidates for admission into the
realms of “Davy Jones’s locker.” But all this was now of the past; for
here was the “Gazelle” anchored in a snug cove in the outskirts of the
Southern metropolis safe and sound, the captain and crew strong, well,
happy, and in all ways improved by their struggles.
The sun was still two hours high when Kenneth and Frank rowed ashore in
“His Nibs” and scrambled up the steep side of the high levee which
protects the city from inundation.
As they looked back on the “Gazelle” so peacefully riding at her
anchorage, they felt like giving three lusty cheers for their floating
home. Beyond the yacht and moored at the docks were two immense
ocean-going steamships, while a short distance up the river was a
full-rigged ship with loosened canvas falling in graceful folds from the
yards. The scene was a pleasing one, and the two boys drank it in with
all their eyes; they loved the sea, and these monster boats had a
peculiar charm for them. But the “clang, clang” of a bell suddenly
awakened them from their reverie, and they started in all haste to get
down town for the mail they knew must be waiting.
The anchorage was at Carrollton, one of the suburbs of New Orleans, so
the boys had a splendid opportunity of seeing the city on their long
trolley-car journey to the main Post Office. The batch of mail that was
handed out to them gladdened their hearts, and it took considerable
resolution to refrain from camping right out on the Post Office steps
and reading their letters. They remembered, however, their promise to
Arthur and Clyde to bring back with them the wherewithal to make a feast
in honor of their safe arrival in the Crescent City.
“Gee! I’d like to know what’s in those letters.” Frank gazed at them
longingly as they walked along. “Look at the fatness of that, will you?”
“I’ve got a fatness myself,” retorted Kenneth, holding a thick letter
bearing several stamps. “We have just about time enough to buy some
truck and get back. What do you say to some oysters?”
“That goes,” was Frank’s hearty endorsement.
Oysters were cheap, they found, so they bought a goodly supply, and for
want of a better carrier put them in a stout paper bag.
The two boys started out bravely, with the bag of oysters between them,
each carrying a bundle of papers and mail under their arms. They saw
many things that interested them—quaint old buildings with balconies and
twisted ironwork, and numbers of picturesque, dark-skinned people
wearing bright colors wherever it was possible.
Frank and Kenneth were so interested in watching what was going on about
them—the people, the buildings, and all the hundred and one things that
would interest a Northern boy in a Southern city—that they forgot all
about the load of oysters till they noticed that the people who met and
passed them were smiling broadly.
“Have I got a smudge on my nose, Frank?” asked Kenneth, trying vainly to
squint down that member.
“No. Have I?” Frank’s answer and question came in the same breath.
“Well, what in thunder are these people grin——”
There was a soft tearing sound, and then a hollow rattle. The boys
looked down quickly and saw that the damp oysters had softened the paper
so that the bag no longer held them, and they were falling, leaving a
generous trail behind them.
Frank and Kenneth scratched their heads; there were no shops near at
hand, the bag was no earthly use, they were a long way from the
anchorage, and the oysters were much too precious to be abandoned.
“What’s the matter with tying up the sleeves of this old coat and making
a bag of it?” Frank’s inventive brain was beginning to work.
“That’s all right, if you don’t object,” was the reply.
An hour later two boys, one of them in his shirt sleeves, came stumbling
along in the dusk toward the levee near which the “Gazelle” was
anchored.
“‘Gazelle’ ahoy!” they hailed. “Have you got room for a bunch of oysters
and a couple of appetites?”
Evidently there was plenty of room, for “His Nibs” came rushing across
to take all three over, the “bunch of oysters” and the “two appetites”
to the yacht, where they found two more appetites eagerly waiting their
coming.
Ransom and his friends had planned to stay but ten days in New Orleans;
just time enough to put in a new mast and refit generally for the long
sea voyage before them. Their good intentions, however, were balked at
every turn. The parents of all the boys, except Ransom’s, besought them
to return; made all sorts of inducements to persuade them to give up the
trip; did everything, in fact, except actually command them. A death in
Clyde’s family made it imperative that he should go back, and it grieved
the boys to have him leave. Clyde was as disappointed as any; and as he
boarded the train to go North he said: “I’d give a farm to be coming
instead of going.”
The crew was now reduced to three, and Ransom feared that Clyde’s return
would influence the others and break up the cruise.
The letters to Frank and Arthur grew more and more insistent, until one
day Chauvet came to Ransom. “Ken,” said he, “this is getting pretty
serious. My people come as near saying that they’ll disown me if I don’t
come back as they can without actually writing the words. I want to go
the rest of the way and play the whole game, and it would be a low down
trick to leave you stranded here without a crew.”
“Well,” said Kenneth, as he sat down by Frank’s side on the levee in the
warm sunshine, “you’ll have to do as you think best, but—I never told
you that my father and mother offered me their house if I would give up
the trip, did I?”
Frank opened his eyes at this.
“No, I didn’t, but it’s a fact; and when I told them that I didn’t have
to be paid to stay and would not go if they felt so strongly about it,
they came right around and said, ‘Go, and God bless you.’”
Kenneth’s eyes moistened a little as he harked back to the time, and a
vivid picture of his far away Northern home arose before him. “Well, old
chap,” he continued, laying his hand on Frank’s knee, “they have been
with me heartily ever since, and I believe that your people would feel
the same about you and be proud of your pluck, too.”
The two looked each other in the eyes a minute—one fair, the other
dark—utterly dissimilar in appearance, but both possessed of indomitable
will and courage—then Frank’s hand slowly sought that of his friend and
gripped it hard.
“Ken, I’m with you.”
“Good,” was the other’s only answer.
Arthur’s decision was soon made when he found that Kenneth and Frank had
determined to put it through. The three were knit together in a bond of
fellowship hard to break.
The equinoctial storms were raging through the Gulf at this period, and
the boys made good use of the time to buy, shape, and put in place a new
mainmast; to tighten up the rigging and repaint the boat’s sides,
covering up the scars made by the inhospitable river. “His Nibs” was
also refitted, so that the staunch little craft looked like new, and was
much admired. The boys rambled all over the old city, from the
above-surface, tomb-like cemetery, to the lively creole quarter. Ransom
visited many ships in port and studied the lines and construction of
ocean-going vessels, river craft and lugger fishing boats. All sorts of
craft congregated at this harbor for all kinds of purposes—for cotton,
for sugar, for every sort of commodity, in fact, even down to mules.
Ransom watched them all, went aboard some and talked with the mates and
engineers. His intelligent questions won him courteous, thoughtful
answers. He took notes, made sketches, and in every way possible took
advantage of this opportunity to fit himself for his life’s work.
At last, on the first of May, 1899, the storms having passed, the
“Gazelle” being as fit and trim as a boat could be, the crew bade
good-by to the many friends they had made, cast off from their moorings
and started for the salt sea.
For two days they sailed through the delta of the Mississippi, and then
entered that dangerous short cut to the Gulf, Cubit’s Gap—a passage
flanked on either side by shoals which even the “Gazelle” could not sail
over. It was lined by the skeletons of wrecked vessels, and made the
boys hesitate a little before taking the risk. But “nothing venture
nothing gained,” they thought, and a successful venture meant almost a
hundred miles gained.
The weather conditions were good and the vote was unanimous in favor of
trying; so, on reaching the cut, the “Gazelle” turned to port and
entered the dangerous channel.
“Good-by, old Mississippi!” Kenneth said, half aloud. “We are ocean
bound at last.”
It was all done very quickly, and never a feeling of reluctance came
over them as they carefully picked their way among the shoals of the
pass.
The run through the sand point, which the current of the river has
forced out into the Gulf, was some six miles long. By careful sailing
the “Gazelle” ran this distance without mishap; and then spread out
before her was the great Gulf of Mexico! Ahead for several miles was the
shallow shoal. Débris of every kind surrounded them. Everything was so
lonesome. Not a sail in sight or anything to make them feel that the
world was peopled.
A flock of sea birds rose from the water, and, with a peculiar cry, flew
far away as if frightened by a sight seldom seen, and for a moment made
it seem as if they were “alone on a wide, wide sea.”
The sea was calm, so, taking a sounding pole aboard “His Nibs,” Frank,
with chart before him, measured the depth. The “Gazelle,” under
shortened sail, followed slowly in his wake, often luffing quickly to
avoid a bar, and surely, though slowly, winding her way. So intricate
did the path become at times that it was necessary for them to cast
anchor and explore ahead for depths sufficient to float the yacht, but
at last, just as the sun was sinking in the distant west, their labors
were rewarded by success, for careful sailing and constant sounding were
necessary, but at last the cheery cry of “No bottom,” came from their
pilot ahead, and in a few minutes the staunch “Gazelle” was gliding
along on the long, rolling surface of the open Gulf, afloat at last on
the great salt sea.