I hardly knew what to make of the weather, for though it blew very hard
the wind was not so violent as it had been during those three days
which I have written of in another part of this story.
The ship managed to hold her own well, with her head at west; I mean
that she went scraping through the water, making very little lee-way,
and so far she could fairly well carry the three close-reefed topsails,
though I believe that had another yard of canvas more than was already
exposed been on her, she would have lain down and never righted again,
so violent was the first clap and outfly of the wind.
Nevertheless, I got the boatswain to take the wheel, and sent Cornish
forward to stand by the fore-topsail sheets, whilst I kept by the
mizzen, for I was not at all sure that the terrific thunder-storm that
had broken over us was not the precursor of a hurricane, to come down
at any moment on the gale that was already blowing, and wreck the ship
out of hand.
In this way twenty minutes passed, when finding the wind to remain
steady, I sang out to Cornish that he might come aft again. As I never
knew the moment when a vessel might heave in sight I bent on the
small ensign and ran it half-way up at the gaff end, not thinking it
judicious to exhibit a train of flag-signals in so much wind. I then
took the telescope, and, setting it steady in the mizzen rigging,
slowly and carefully swept the weather horizon, and afterwards
transferred the glass to leeward, but no ship was to be seen.
"We ought to be in the track o' some sort o' wessels, too," exclaimed
the boatswain, who had been awaiting the result of my inspections. "The
steamers from Liverpool to New Orleans, and the West Indie mail-ships
'ud come right across this way, wouldn't they?"
"Not quite so far north," I answered. "But there ought to be no lack
of sailing ships from all parts--from England to the southern ports of
the United States and North America--from American ports to Rio and
the eastern coast of South America. They cannot keep us long waiting.
Something must heave in sight soon."
"Suppose we sight a wessel, what do you mean to do, sir?"
"Ask them to let me have a few men to work the ship to the nearest
port."
"But suppose they're short-handed?"
"Then they won't oblige us."
"I can't see myself, sir," said he, "why, instead o' tryin' to fetch
Bermuda, we shouldn't put the helm up and square away for England. How
might the English Channel lie as we now are?"
"A trifle to the east'ard of north-east."
"Well, this here's a fair wind for it."
"That's true; but will you kindly remember that the ship's company
consists of three men."
"Of four, countin' the steward, and five, countin' Miss Robertson."
"Of three men, I say, capable of working the vessel."
"Well, yes; you're right. Arter all, there's only three to go aloft."
"I suppose you know," I continued, "that it would take a sailing ship,
properly manned, four or five weeks to make the English Channel."
"Well, sir."
"Neither you, nor I, nor Cornish could do without sleep for four or
five weeks."
"We could keep regular watches, Mr. Royle."
"I dare say we could; but we should have to let the ship remain under
reefed topsails. But instead of taking four or five weeks, we should
take four or five months to reach England under close-reefed topsails,
unless we could keep a gale of wind astern of us all the way. I'll tell
you what it is, bo'sun, these exploits are very pretty, and appear very
possible in books, and persons who take anything that is told them
about the sea as likely and true, believe they can be accomplished.
And on one or two occasions they have been accomplished. Also I have
heard on one occasion a gentleman made a voyage from Timor to Bathurst
Island on the back of a turtle. But the odds, in my unromantic opinion,
are a thousand to one against our working the ship home as we are,
unless we can ship a crew on the road, and very shortly. And how can
we be sure of this? There is scarce a ship goes to sea now that is not
short-handed. We may sight fifty vessels, and get no help from one of
them. They may all be willing to take us on board if we abandon the
_Grosvenor_; but they'll tell us that they can give us no assistance to
work her. Depend upon it, our wisest course is to make Bermuda. There,
perhaps, we may pick up some hands. But if we head for England in this
trim--a deep ship, with heavy gear to work, and but two seamen to
depend upon, if the third has to take the wheel, trusting to chance to
help us, I repeat that the odds against our bringing the ship home are
one thousand to one. We shall be at the mercy of every gale that rises,
and end in becoming a kind of phantom ship, chased about the ocean just
as the wind happens to blow us."
"Well, sir," said he, "I dare say you're right, and I'll say no more
about it. Now, about turnin' in. I'll keep here if you like to go below
for a couple of hours. Cornish can stand by to rouse you up."
I had another look to windward before making up my mind to go below.
A strong sea was rising, and the wind blew hard enough to keep one
leaning against it. There was no break in the sky, and the horizon was
thick, but the look-out was not worse than it had been half an hour
before.
We were, however, snug enough aloft, if not very neat; the bunt of
the mainsail, indeed, looked rather shaky, but the other sails lay
very secure upon the yards; and this being so, and the gale remaining
steady, I told the boatswain to keep the ship to her present course,
and went below, yawning horribly and dead wearied.
I had slept three-quarters of an hour, when I was awakened by the
steward rushing into my cabin and hauling upon me like a madman. Being
scarcely conscious, I imagined that the mutineers had got on board
again, and that here was one of them falling upon me; and having sense
enough, I suppose, in my sleepy brain to make me determine to sell my
life at a good price, I let fly at the steward's breast and struck him
so hard that he roared out, which sound brought me to my senses at once.
"What is it?" I cried.
"Oh, sir," responded the steward, half dead with terror and the loss
of breath occasioned by my blow, "the ship's sinking, sir! We're all
going down! I've been told to fetch you up. The Lord have mercy upon
us!"
I rolled on to the deck in my hurry to leave the bunk, and ran with all
my speed up the companion ladder; nor was the ascent difficult, for the
ship was on a level keel, pitching heavily indeed, but rolling slightly.
Scarcely, however, was my head up through the companion, when I thought
it would have been blown off my shoulders. The fury and force of the
wind was such as I had never before in all my life experienced.
Both the boatswain and Cornish were at the wheel, and, in order to
reach them, I had to drop upon my hands and knees and crawl along the
deck. When near them I took a grip of the grating and looked around me.
The first thing I saw was that the mainsail had blown away from most
of the gaskets, and was thundering in a thousand rags upon the yard.
The foresail was split in halves, and the port mizzen-topsail sheet
had carried away, and the sail was pealing like endless discharges of
musketry.
All the spars were safe still. The lee braces had been let go, the
helm put up, and the ship was racing before a hurricane as furious as
a tornado, heading south-east, with a wilderness of foam boiling under
her bows.
This, then, was the real gale which the thunder-storm had been nearly
all night bringing up. The first gale was but a summer breeze compared
to it.
The clouds lay like huge fantastic rolls of sheet lead upon the sky; in
some quarters of the circle drooping to the water-line in patches and
spaces ink-black. No fragment of blue heaven was visible; and yet it
was lighter than it had been when I went below.
The ensign, half-masted, roared over my head; the sea was momentarily
growing heavier, and, as the ship pitched, she took the water in broad
sheets over her forecastle.
The terrible beating of the mizzen-topsail was making the mizzen-mast,
from the mastcoat to the royal mast-head, jump like a piece of
whalebone. Although deafened, bewildered, and soaked through with the
screaming of the gale, the thunder of the torn canvas, and the spray
which the wind tore out of the sea and hurtled through the air, I still
preserved my senses; and perceiving that the mizzen-topmast would go if
the sail were not got rid of, I crawled on my hands and knees to the
foot of the mast, and let go the remaining sheet.
With appalling force, and instantaneously, the massive chain was torn
through the sheave-hole, and in less time than I could have counted
ten, one half the sail had blown into the main-top, and the rest
streamed like the ends of whipcord from the yard.
I crawled to the fore-end of the poop to look at the mainmast; that
stood steady; but whilst I watched the foremast, the foresail went to
pieces, and the leaping and plunging of the heavy blocks upon it made
the whole mast quiver so violently that the top-gallant and royal-mast
bent to and fro like a bow strung and unstrung quickly.
I waited some moments, debating whether or not to let go the
fore-topsail sheets; but reflecting that the full force of the wind was
kept away from it by the main-topsail, and that it would certainly blow
to pieces if I touched a rope belonging to it, I dropped on my hands
and knees again and crawled away aft.
"I saw it coming!" roared the bo'sun in my ear. "I had just time to
sing out to Cornish to slacken the lee-braces, and to put the helm hard
over."
"We shall never be able to run!" I bellowed back. "She'll be pooped as
sure as a gun when the sea comes! We must heave her to whilst we can.
No use thinking of the fore-topsail--it must go!"
"Look there!" shouted Cornish, dropping the spokes with one hand to
point.
There was something indeed to look at; one of the finest steamers I had
ever seen, brig-rigged, hove to under a main-staysail. She seemed, so
rapidly were we reeling through the water, to rise out of the sea.
She lay with her bowsprit pointing across our path, just on our
starboard bow. Lying as she was, without way on her, we should have
run into her had the weather been thick, as surely as I live to say so.
We slightly starboarded the helm, clearing her by the time we were
abreast by not more than a quarter of a mile. But we dared not have
hauled the ship round another point; for, with our braces all loose,
the first spilling of the sails would have brought the yards aback, in
which case indeed we might have called upon God to have mercy on our
souls, for the ship would not have lived five minutes.
There was something fascinating in the spectacle of that beautiful
steamship, rolling securely in the heavy sea, revealing as she went
over to starboard her noble graceful hull, to within a few feet of her
keel. But there was also something unspeakably dreadful to us to see
help so close at hand, and yet of no more use than had it offered a
thousand miles away.
There was a man on her bridge, and others doubtless watched our vessel
unseen by us; and God knows what sensations must have been excited
in them by the sight of our torn and whirling ship blindly rushing
before the tempest, her sails in rags, the half-hoisted ensign bitterly
illustrating our miserable condition, and appealing, with a power and
pathos no human cry could express, for help which could not be given.
"Let us try and heave her to now!" I shrieked, maddened by the sight of
this ship whirling fast away on our quarter. "We can lie by her until
the gale has done and then she will help us!"
But the boatswain could not control the wheel alone: the blows of the
sea against the rudder made it hard for even four pairs of hands to
hold the wheel steady. I rushed to the companion and bawled for the
steward, and when, after a long pause, he emerged, no sooner did the
wind hit him than he rolled down the ladder.
I sprang below, hauled him up by the collar of his jacket, and drove
him with both hands to his stern up to the wheel.
"Hold on to these spokes!" I roared. And then Cornish and I ran
staggering along the poop.
"Get the end of the starboard main-brace to the capstan!" I cried to
him. "Look alive! ship one of the bars ready!"
And then I scrambled as best I could down on the main-deck, and went
floundering forward through the water that was now washing higher than
my ankle to the fore-topsail halliards, which I let go.
Crack! whiz! away went the sail, strips of it flying into the sea like
smoke.
I struggled back again on to the poop, but the violence of the wind was
almost more than I could bear: it beat the breath out of me; it stung
my face just as if it were filled with needles; it roared in my ears;
it resembled a solid wall; it rolled me off my knees and hands, and
obliged me to drag myself against it bit by bit, by whatever came in my
road to hold on to.
Cornish lay upon the deck with the end of the main-brace in his hands,
having taken the necessary turns with it around the capstan.
I laid my weight against the bar and went to work, and scrambling and
panting, beaten half dead by the wind, and no more able to look astern
without protecting my eyes with my hands than I could survey any object
in a room full of blinding smoke, I gradually got the mainyard round,
but found I had not the strength to bring it close to the mast.
I saw the boatswain speak to the steward, who left the wheel to help
me with his weight against the capstan bar.
I do think at that moment that the boatswain transformed himself into
an immovable figure of iron. Heaven knows from what measureless inner
sources he procured the temporary strength: he clenched his teeth, and
the muscles in his hands rose like bulbs as he hung to the wheel and
pitted his strength against the blows of the seas upon the rudder.
Brave, honest fellow! a true seaman, a true Englishman! Well would
it be for sailors were there more of his kind among them to set them
examples of honest labour, noble self-sacrifice, and duty ungrudgingly
performed!
The seas struck the ship heavily as she rounded to. I feared that
she would have too much head-sail to lie close, for the foresail and
fore-topsail were in ribbons--they might show enough roaring canvas
when coupled with the fore-topmast staysail to make her pay off, we
having no after-sail set to counterbalance the effect of them.
However, she lay steady, that is, as the compass goes, but rolled
fearfully, wallowing deep like a ship half full of water, and shipped
such tremendous seas that I constantly expected to hear the crash of
the galley stove in.
I now shaded my eyes to look astern; not hoping, indeed, to see the
steamer near, but expecting at least to find her in sight. But the
horizon was a dull blank: not a sign of the vessel to be seen, nothing
but the rugged line of water, and the nearer deep dark under the shadow
of the leaden pouring clouds.