NAVIGATING THE BRIG.
The brigantine, on which our dorymates now found themselves shipped as
able seamen under the command of Captain McCloud, had been almost left
to herself for nearly two weeks, during which time the current of the
Gulf Stream had carried her far to the northward of her course. No
observations had been taken on board in all this time, and the dense
fog, through which the vessel had been drifting for the past four days,
would have effectually prevented this work even had Captain McCloud been
strong enough to perform it. He was therefore not surprised to learn
from the boys that he was now on the Grand Bank, but he determined to
try and take an observation at noon that day, and discover their exact
position.
The promise of wind that interrupted the captain’s story was fulfilled
by a steady breeze from the southward, which, as their general course
was westerly, was favorable and satisfactory. While the captain took the
wheel, Nimbus and the boys hoisted the jib, got the foresail loosed and
sheeted home, shook the reefs out of the fore-topsail, swayed up the
heavy yard by means of a winch, and set the royal. They got one reef out
of the main-sail without much trouble, but when it came to the second
they found it so difficult to hoist the great folds of heavy canvas and
its weighty spar that the boys became wholly exhausted with their
efforts, and even the enormous strength of Nimbus was exerted to its
utmost. After bracing the yards, trimming the sheets of the head-sails,
and even getting in a bit of the main-sheet, they set to work
overhauling the running rigging, and bringing order out of its confused
tangle.
At this last work Wolfe, having sailed before the mast on a
square-rigged vessel, was more at home than Breeze, but the latter was
quick to comprehend, and so learned easily; for a ready comprehension is
more than half of learning. While the boys were thus employed Captain
McCloud called Breeze to take the wheel, as it was nearly noon, and time
to take his observation. Fortunately, amid all the trouble and disaster
that had overtaken the brig, her chronometer had not been allowed to run
down, and with the sextant, and other instruments belonging to her late
captain, it was still in a serviceable condition.
Bringing the sextant on deck, Captain McCloud gazed through it at the
sun, as reflected in a small mirror, until it had reached its greatest
altitude and stood exactly above the meridian, or, in other words, until
it was noon. By looking at the chronometer, which was set to Greenwich
time, the difference between the noon where they then were and Greenwich
noon was found to be three hours and twenty-six minutes, or two hundred
and six minutes. As the earth revolves from west to east at the rate of
one degree--which at the equator is sixty miles--every four minutes, the
whole number of minutes divided by four gave fifty-one and a half, or
51° 30´, as the longitude of the brig west from Greenwich.
The latitude of the place--its distance north or south from the
equator--was obtained by another observation of the sun, taken with the
sextant, for the purpose of finding the angle between it and the zenith,
or point directly overhead. A glance at the _Nautical Almanac_ under the
date of that day, and a minute’s figuring, gave the required result. The
latitude thus found was 43° 37´, and of course, being north of the
equator, it was north latitude, or 43° 37´ north.
Having obtained these two figures, Captain McCloud got out a chart of
that portion of the Atlantic, and drawing on it a fine north and south
line through meridian of longitude 51° 30´ west, and a delicate east and
west line to indicate parallel of latitude 43° 37´ north, he made a
small cross at their point of intersection, and showed it to Breeze as
the position of the brig at that moment. It was very near the southern
point of the Grand Bank and almost due east from Gloucester, but over
eight hundred miles from that port.
“There!” said Captain McCloud when he had finished these operations, in
all of which Breeze had been greatly interested. “If we steer due west,
and hold this wind, we ought to sight Sable Island by day after
to-morrow, and run into port inside of three days more. How would that
suit you, my boy?”
“It seems as though I couldn’t wait for the time to come, father. Won’t
it be glorious to sail into Gloucester harbor and take everybody by
surprise? But, father, while we are on this cruise I wish you would
teach me something of navigation. I never saw an observation taken
before. They don’t take them on board fishing schooners, do they?”
“Not often. Most fishing skippers trust to their lead, log, and compass.
They can generally tell by the sort of bottom the lead brings up where
they are. You have often, I dare say, noticed skippers examining the
sand and shells that stick to the tallow in the bottom of the lead.”
Breeze said he had, but that he should think it would be pretty hard to
remember what the whole bottom of the ocean was made of.
“We don’t try to,” laughed his father, “we only remember what sort of
material forms a few of the principal banks and reefs. For the rest we
examine the charts, where it is all laid down. Now I am going to show
you an old-fashioned-log, and how to use it. It is the only one I can
find aboard, though many vessels nowadays use patent self-registering
logs.”
“Of course I have often heard of heaving the log,” said Breeze, casting
an eye aloft at the sails, then glancing at the compass, and giving the
wheel a spoke or two to keep the brig on her true westerly course, “but
I never knew exactly how it was done.”
Captain McCloud called upon Nimbus to bring him the log and the glass,
and made ready to use them. The log was a triangular piece of thin
board, having its base rounded and weighted with lead. Three short lines
extending from the three corners fastened it to the log-line, much as a
kite is hung. The log-line was about a thousand feet long, and had a
number of red rags, or “knots,” tied to it, at distances of fifty-one
feet apart. Each of these long spaces was divided into ten short spaces,
called “fathoms,” by bits of leather twisted into the line.
The glass, which was to mark the time of the log’s running, was shaped
like an hour-glass, but was much smaller, and the sand contained in it
occupied only half a minute in running from one end to the other. Now,
half a minute is the one hundred and twentieth part of an hour, and
fifty-one feet is the same portion of a nautical mile, which is 6120
feet, or 840 feet longer than a geographical or land mile. Thus, when we
say that a vessel sails six knots (or miles) an hour, we mean that six
knots, or three hundred and six feet, of the log-line ran out in half a
minute. The log-line is wound on a reel that turns very easily.
In the present instance Nimbus dropped the log into the water over the
lee quarter of the brig, and held the reel in his hands. When the first
fifty feet, which is called the “stray-line,” and is sufficient to carry
the log clear of the vessel’s eddy, had run out, and Nimbus saw the
first red rag touch the water, he sang out, “Turn!” Captain McCloud
turned the half-minute glass, so that the sand in it began to drop to
the other end, and answered, “Done!” The instant it stopped running he
cried, “Stop!” and Nimbus held the reel, so that no more line should run
out.
“Seben knot, five fadom, sah,” he reported to the captain.
“Very good,” said the captain; “reel in.” Then to Breeze and Wolfe he
said, "That shows that we are running at the rate of seven and a half
knots, or miles, an hour. By heaving the log every hour, and keeping
note of all the courses steered, we shall not only know pretty nearly
the distance run, but can determine our position at the end of each sea,
or nautical, day, which is at noon. This is called ‘dead-reckoning,’ and
is useful as a check on observations, and also when on account of cloudy
weather no observation can be taken. Of course, for such reckoning we
must have some fixed point to start from, or ‘point of departure,’ as it
is called. Ours in the present case is the point, back here a few miles,
that we established by finding its latitude and longitude, and marking
it on the chart.
“There is one more thing to be thought of in our dead-reckoning, and
that is the leeway. This may be caused by ocean currents, or by a beam
wind, which not only acts upon the sails, so as to force the vessel
ahead, but to a certain extent drives her sidewise. This must be allowed
for, and every captain must use his own judgment to determine what
leeway his vessel is making, and how much her course should be altered
to allow for it. Now I am going to allow a couple of points for leeway,
and instead of keeping her due west, Breeze, you may make it
west-south-west.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” answered Breeze, promptly; “west-sou’west,” and he
altered the brig’s course slightly in obedience to these instructions.
“At the same time,” continued the captain, “we shall mark the course on
the chart, as though we were heading due west.”
All this had been so interesting to the young sailors that, though
already quite hungry again, they were almost sorry to hear Nimbus
announce dinner just at this point.
After dinner, and after Captain McCloud had rested for an hour in the
cabin, the boys asked him to tell them how he escaped from his awful
position in the forecastle of the capsized _Sea Robin_, and of his
experiences, since that time.
“Well,” he replied, “of course I will tell you the whole story; but I
hate so to think of that time that I shall make my yarn as brief as
possible.”
“You left off,” said Breeze, “just where poor Dick Simonds had dived out
of the forecastle, and you didn’t hear anything more of him.”
"Yes, I remember. Well, as you can imagine, I felt badly enough in that
place, all alone, with the water steadily gaining on me, and not the
faintest hope of escaping. I would have followed Dick Simonds in a
moment, but that I knew there was no chance of getting out that way. To
do so would simply have been to commit suicide, and that has always
seemed to me a pretty mean and cowardly way of escaping trouble.
"When we were first shut in there we could sit on the edge of the lower
bunks; but before Dick left the water had risen so that we were sitting
in it, and I soon had to stand on the bunks to keep out of it. It must
have been night again, for no ray of light came in through the broken
hatch, when I found the water so deep that I was obliged to climb up on
the foremast, and sit there with my head between two of the bunks on the
upper side. I knew this was the last move I could make, and I fully
expected to die there. I had no way of knowing how long I sat there; but
it seemed like many hours, and doubtless was.
"All of a sudden, I seemed to hear faint, far-away voices, then some
heavy object struck the hull of the schooner, and directly I heard
footsteps, as though men were walking upon the bottom above me. I nearly
suffocated in my efforts to shout; but somehow I couldn’t utter a sound.
I don’t know whether it was from excitement or weakness, but my voice
had left me. Then I tried to make them hear by pounding with my fists on
the planking overhead; but though I kept it up until my hands were
bleeding and numb, the sound did not reach them. At last I ceased to
hear the footsteps, and imagined that the men, having satisfied their
curiosity, were going to leave, which, as I afterwards found out, was
the case.
"At that moment I thought of my watch, which was still in my pocket, and
which, as you know, Breeze, had a very heavy silver case. Pounding on
the planking with it, I succeeded in making a sound that attracted their
attention just as they were about to pull away. I never stopped my
pounding for a moment until somebody sung out, ‘Hello in the schooner!
Is anybody inside there?’
"I found voice then to answer that I was in there all alone, that the
water had nearly reached me, and to beg them not to go away without
trying to do something for me.
"‘All right, shipmate,’ came the answer; ‘we won’t leave you as long as
there’s a chance of saving you. You may count on that. We are only going
for some tools to cut a hole with, and will be back in a few minutes. So
keep up a good heart.’
"I heard them go away and then return again; and by rapping on the
planking with my watch, I managed to show them a place between two ribs
where there was no inside sheathing. Here they began to cut, after
asking me how thick the planking was. They did not break through in any
one place until they had cut very nearly through all around, for fear of
making holes out of which the air would rush. In that case, you see, the
schooner would quickly sink, taking me with her.
“At last they sang out for me to keep from under, as they were ready to
break in. Then came three or four quick blows, a section about two feet
square was crushed in, and somehow I got out through the opening. I
think I must have been almost shot out by the confined air that rushed
out with a roar. At any rate, there was barely time for the men to drag
me into their boat and push back a few yards from the wreck when she
sank like a stone. The boat was spun around and around like a straw in
the vortex that it made, and for a moment they were afraid that it was
going to be sucked under. I knew nothing of this until afterwards, for I
became unconscious the moment I got into the fresh air and out of the
foul gases I had been breathing so long. When I recovered I was lying in
a berth in the _Esmeralda’s_ cabin.”
“The _Esmeralda’s_ cabin!” interrupted Breeze. “Was it this very brig,
father?”
"Yes; I was lying in the cabin of this very brig, which was bound for
the west coast of Africa, with a cargo of salt fish from the Provinces.
It seemed that, while lying becalmed that morning, they had drifted
close to the wreck of the _Sea Robin_, and the mate, with a couple of
men, had boarded it out of curiosity. They had got into their boat again
to leave, without a suspicion that anybody was in her, when they heard
the noise I made pounding with the old watch. The men said it was only
rats, and wanted to go on; but the mate insisted on finding out what it
really was.
"All hands, from the captain down, did everything for me; but it was a
long time before I recovered from the horror of those two days shut up
with the rats in that wreck. I was always on the lookout for some vessel
on which I might get a passage to the United States, but we only spoke
two on the whole voyage. One of these was bound for South America and
the other around the Horn, so I stuck by the brig.
"We made a quick run out, discharged our cargo promptly, and tried to
take in our return cargo of palm-oil quickly, so as to start back before
the sickly season set in. Somehow, though, everything seemed to work
against us. One delay followed another, until we had spent three months
on the coast cruising from the mouth of one pestiferous river to
another, picking up our cargo in small lots here and there.
"At last the fever broke out among us, and the captain was the first one
to go. Then the cook died, and we got Nimbus in his place. Fortunately
for us, he was visiting his old home at that time, and ever since he
came aboard he has proved one of the best all-round hands I ever had on
a vessel. The mate and crew begged me to act as captain and take the
brig home, which I finally consented to do. I got away from the coast as
quickly as possible, in hopes of saving the rest of them; but having
once got its hold, the fever would not let go, and they dropped off one
after another. I was taken down nearly a month ago, and the first mate
not until two weeks later; but the fever made short work with him, poor
fellow! When I got about again I found that Nimbus and I were the only
ones left, and nothing but his constant care and good nursing pulled me
through. The vessel has been left to drift for I don’t know how long;
but, fortunately, we have had no very severe weather, and with such help
as Nimbus could give her, she has taken care of herself.
“It’s a sad story, but it’s all past and done with now. After this
wonderful meeting with you, I think the hard luck of the old brig must
have left her, and within a few days more we’ll carry her, safe and
sound, into Gloucester harbor.”
Captain McCloud and Wolfe Brady stood watch for the first half of that
night, and at midnight they turned in, while Breeze and Nimbus came on
deck.
Two hours later Nimbus, who was steering, lashed his wheel, and said
they must heave the log, as the wind had freshened considerably. They
got a lantern on deck, and Breeze was to turn and watch the glass, while
Nimbus held the reel.
The line had run about half out when it was suddenly slacked by the
rising of the brig on a heavy sea. The slack caught on something, and
Breeze leaned far over the taffrail to clear it. As he did so the big
sea that had lifted her seemed to slide out from under the vessel, she
dropped into the hollow with a sharp lurch, and the boy was flung far
from her. Without a sound he disappeared, and the blackness of the night
closed over him as the brig swept on her course.