[Footnote: 1895]
'Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidst the mighty ocean keep
Its own appointed limits deep.'
The lady passengers were trying the wheezy old harmonium in front of the
cuddy, because it was Sunday night. In the patch of darkness near the
wheel-grating sat the Captain, and the end of his cheroot burned like a
head-lamp. There was neither breath nor motion upon the waters through
which the screw was thudding. They spread, dull silver, under the haze
of the moonlight till they joined the low coast of Malacca away to the
eastward. The voices of the singers at the harmonium were held down by
the awnings, and came to us with force.
'Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea.'
It was as though the little congregation were afraid of the vastness
of the sea. But a laugh followed, and some one said, 'Shall we take it
through again a little quicker?' Then the Captain told the story of just
such a night, lowering his voice for fear of disturbing the music and
the minds of the passengers.
'She was the _Visigoth_,--five hundred tons, or it may have been
six,--in the coasting trade; one of the best steamers and best found
on the Kutch-Kasauli line. She wasn't six years old when the thing
happened: on just such a night as this, with an oily smooth sea, under
brilliant starlight, about a hundred miles from land. To this day no one
knows really what the matter was. She was so small that she could not
have struck even a log in the water without every soul on board feeling
the jar; and even if she had struck something, it wouldn't have made her
go down as she did. I was fourth officer then; we had about seven saloon
passengers, including the Captain's wife and another woman, and perhaps
five hundred deck-passengers going up the coast to a shrine, on just
such a night as this, when she was ripping through the level sea at a
level nine knots an hour. The man on the bridge, whoever it was, saw
that she was sinking at the head. Sinking by the head as she went along.
That was the only warning we got. She began to sink as she went along.
Of course the Captain was told, and he sent me to wake up the saloon
passengers and tell them to come on deck. 'Sounds a curious sort of
message that to deliver on a dead still night. The people tumbled up
in their dressing-gowns and _pyjamas_, and wouldn't believe me. We were
just sinking as fast as we could, and I had to tell 'em that. Then the
deck-passengers got wind of it, and all Hell woke up along the decks.
'The rule in these little affairs is to get your saloon passengers off
first, then to fill the boats with the balance, and afterwards--God
help the extras, that's all. I was getting the starboard stern boat--the
mail-boat--away. It hung as it might be over yonder, and as I came
along from the cuddy, the deck-passengers hung round me, shoving their
money-belts into my hand, taking off their nose-rings and earrings, and
thrusting 'em upon me to buy just one chance for life. If I hadn't been
so desperately busy, I should have thought it horrible. I put biscuits
and water into the boat, and got the two ladies in. One of 'em was the
Captain's wife. She had to be put in by main force. You've no notion how
women can struggle. The other woman was the wife of an officer going
to meet her husband; and there were a couple of passengers beside the
lascars. The Captain said he was going to stay with the ship. You see
the rule in these affairs, I believe, is that the Captain has to bow
gracefully from the bridge and go down. I haven't had a ship under my
charge wrecked yet. When that comes, I'll have to do like the others.
After the boats were away, and I saw that there was nothing to be got by
waiting, I jumped overboard exactly as I might have vaulted over into a
flat green field, and struck out for the mail-boat. Another officer did
the same thing, but he went for a boat full of natives, and they whacked
him on the chest with oars, so he had some difficulty in climbing in.
'It was as well that I reached the mail-boat. There was a compass in it,
but the idiots had managed to fill the boat half full of water somehow
or another, and none of the crew seemed to know what was required of
them. Then the _Visigoth_ went down and took every one with her--ships
generally do that; the corpses don't cumber the sea for some time.
'What did I do? I kept all the boats together, and headed into the track
of the coasting steamers. The aggravating thing was the thought that
we were close to land as far as a big steamer was concerned, and in
the middle of eternity as far as regarded a little boat. The sea looks
hugeous big from a boat at night.'
'Oh, Christ, whose voice the waters heard
And hushed their ravings at Thy word,
Who walkedst on the foaming deep
And calm amidst its rage did keep,--
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!'
sang the passengers cheerily.
'That harmonium is disgracefully out of tune,' said the Captain. 'The
sea air affects their insides. Well, as I was saying, we settled down in
the boat. The Captain's wife was unconscious; she lay in the bottom of
the boat and moaned. I was glad she wasn't threshing about the boat: but
what I did think was wrong, was the way the two men passengers behaved.
They were useless with funk--out and out fear. They lay in the boat and
did nothing. Fetched a groan now and again to show they were alive; but
that was all. But the other woman was a jewel. Damn it, it was worth
being shipwrecked to have that woman in the boat; she was awfully
handsome, and as brave as she was lovely. She helped me bail out the
boat, and she worked like a man.
'So we kicked about the sea from midnight till seven the next evening,
and then we saw a steamer. “I'll--I'll give you anything I'm wearing to
hoist as a signal of distress,” said the woman; but I had no need to ask
her, for the steamer picked us up and took us back to Bombay. I forgot
to tell you that, when the day broke, I couldn't recognise the Captain's
wife--widow, I mean. She had changed in the night as if fire had gone
over her. I met her a long time afterwards, and even then she hadn't
forgiven me for putting her into the boat and obeying the Captain's
orders. But the husband of the other woman--he's in the Army--wrote me
no end of a letter of thanks. I don't suppose he considered that the way
his wife behaved was enough to make any decent man do all he could. The
other fellows, who lay in the bottom of the boat and groaned, I've never
met. Don't want to. Shouldn't be civil to 'em if I did. And that's how
the _Visigoth_ went down, for no assignable reason, with eighty bags of
mail, five hundred souls, and not a single packet insured, on just such
a night as this.'
'Oh, Trinity of love and power,
Our brethren shield in that dread hour,
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them whereso'er they go.
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise by land and sea.'
'Strikes me they'll go on singing that hymn all night. Imperfect sort of
doctrine in the last lines, don't you think? They might have run in an
extra verse specifying sudden collapse--like the _Visigoth's_. I'm going
on to the bridge, now. Good-night,' said the Captain.
And I was left alone with the steady thud, thud, of the screw and the
gentle creaking of the boats at the davits.
_That_ made me shudder.