THE FRENCH LUGGER
My pipe was out; the quarter-deck bulwarks hid the sea, and so I
mounted the poop ladder to take a look round before turning in. Away
to port, or _larboard_, as we then called it, was a full-rigged ship
rolling up Channel under all plain sail, with such a smother of white
yeast clouding her bows, and racing aft into the long line of her
wake, which went glaring over the dark throbbing waters, that it made
one think of the base of a waterspout writhing upwards to meet the
descending tube of vapour. She was the first object that took my eye,
and I hurriedly crossed the deck to view her. Mr. Prance, the chief
mate, stood at the rail watching her.
‘A noble sight!’ said I.
‘Yes, sir, an English frigate. A fifty-one gun vessel, apparently.
Upon my word, nothing statelier ever swam, or ever again will swim,
than ships of that kind. Look at the line of her batteries--black and
white like the keys of a pianoforte! What squareness of yard, sir! Her
main-royal should be as big as our topgallant-sail.’
He sent a look aloft at the reeling, fabric over our heads, with a
thoughtful drag, at a short growth of beard that curled upwards from
his chin like the fore-thatch of a sou’-wester. The noble ship went
floating out into the darkness astern, and her pale heights died upon
the gloom like a burst of steam dissolving in the wind.
‘What is that out yonder upon the starboard bow there, Mr. Prance?’
said I.
He peered awhile, and said: ‘Some craft reaching like
ourselves--standing as we head--a lumpish thing, anyhow. What a blot
she makes, seeing that she has no height of spar!’
‘We are overhauling her,’ said I.
‘Ay,’ he answered, keeping his eyes fixed upon her. ‘Doesn’t she seem a
bit uncertain, though?’ he muttered, as if thinking aloud.
I had wonderfully good sight in those days, and after straining my eyes
awhile against the heap of scarce determinable shadow which the craft
made, I exclaimed: ‘She’ll be a French lugger, or I’m greatly mistaken.’
‘I believe you are right, sir,’ answered the mate.
He drew a little away from me, as a hint, perhaps, that he desired to
address his attention to the vessel on the bow, and suddenly putting
his hand to his mouth, he hailed the forecastle in a sharp clear note.
An answer was returned swift as the tone of a bell to the blow of its
tongue.
‘Show a light forward! Smartly now! That chap ahead seems asleep.’
There were no side-lights in those days. Some long years were to elapse
before the Shipping Act enforced the use of a night signal more to the
point than a short flourish of the binnacle lamp over the side. In a
few moments a large globular lantern in the grip of a seaman, whose
figure showed like a sketch in phosphorus to the illumination of the
flame, was rested upon the forecastle rail, with the night beyond him
looking the blacker for the rising and falling point of fire. The hint
seemed to be taken by the fellow ahead, and the mate walked aft to the
binnacle, into which he stood looking, afterwards going to the rail, at
which he lingered, staring forwards.
I crossed over to leeward to watch the milk-like race of waters along
the side. The foam made a sort of twilight of its own in the air. Under
the foot of the mainsail that was arched transversely across the deck,
the wind stormed with a note of hurricane out of the huge concavity of
the cloths, and made the rushing snow giddy with the whipping of it,
till the eye reeled again to the sight of the yeasty boiling. Never
did any ship raise such a smother about her as the _Countess Ida_. Our
speed was scarce a full five miles, and yet, looking over to leeward,
when the huge fabric came heeling down to her channels to the scud
of a sea and to the weight of the wind in her canvas, you would have
supposed her thundering through it a whole ten knots at least.
On a sudden there was a loud and fearful cry forward. ‘Port your
hellum! port your hellum!’ I could hear a voice roaring out with a
meaning as of life or death in the startling vehemence of the utterance.
‘Starboard! starboard!’ shouted Mr. Prance, who was still standing
aft: ‘over with it, men, for God’s sake, before we’re into her!’
Next instant there was a dull shock throughout the ship; a thrill
that ran through her planks into the very soles of one’s feet, while
there arose shrieks and shouts as from three-score throats under the
bows, and a most lamentable and terrifying noise of wood-splintering,
of canvas tearing, of liberated sails flogging the wind. I bounded
to the weather-rail, and saw a large hull of some eighty tons wholly
dismasted--a wild scene of wreck and ruin to the flash of the moon at
that moment shining down out of a clear space of sky--gliding past into
our wake. The dark object seemed filled with men, and the yells left me
in no doubt that she was a Frenchman--a large three-masted lugger, as I
had supposed her.
In an instant our ship was in an uproar. There is nothing in language
to express the noise and excitement. To begin with, our helm having
been put down, we had come round into the wind, and lay pitching
heavily with sails slatting and thundering, yards creaking, rigging
straining. The sailors rushed to and fro. All discipline for the
moment seemed to have gone overboard. The captain had come tumbling up
on deck, and was calling orders to the mate, who re-echoed them in loud
bawlings to the quarter-deck and forecastle. Lanterns were got up and
shown over the rail, and by the light of them you saw the figures of
the seamen speeding from rope to rope and hauling upon the gear, their
gruff, harsh chorusings rising high above the terrified chatter of the
passengers--many of whom had rushed up on deck barely clothed--high
also above the storming and shrilling of the wind, the deep notes of
angry waters warring at our bows, and the distracting shaking and
beating of the sails.
But a few orders delivered by Mr. Prance, whose tongue was as a trumpet
in a moment like this, acted upon the ship as the sympathetic hand of a
horseman upon a restive terrified thoroughbred.
‘Haul up the mainsail--fore clew garnets--back maintopsail yard--tail
on to the weather-braces and round in handsomely. Mr. Cocker (this was
addressed to the second-mate, who had tumbled up with the rest of the
watch below on feeling the thump the _Countess Ida_ had given herself,
and on hearing the uproar that followed)--burn a flare--smartly, if you
please! Also get blue lights and rockets up.’
I ran aft to see if the vessel that we had wrecked was anywhere about.
The moon was shining brilliantly down upon the sea at that time, and
the swollen Channel waters were lifting their black heights into
creaming peaks in an atmosphere of delicate silver haze, that yet
suffered the eye to penetrate to the dark confines of the horizon. The
wake of the planet was a long throbbing line of angry broken splendour
in the south; but the tail of it seemed to stream fair to the point of
sea into which the lugger had veered, and I was confident that if she
were afloat I should see her.
‘Who is that to leeward there?’ called the captain from the other side
of the wheel in a tone of worry and irritation.
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ I replied.
‘Oh, beg pardon, I’m sure,’ he exclaimed; ‘do you see anything of the
vessel that we’ve run down?’
‘Nothing,’ I responded.
‘She must have foundered,’ said he; ‘yet though I listened, I heard no
cries after the wreck had once fairly settled away from us.’
Here the mate came aft hastily, and with a touch of his cap, reported
that the well had been sounded, and that all was right with the ship.
‘Very well, sir,’ said the captain. ‘I shall keep all fast with my
boats. The calamity can’t be helped. I’m not going to increase it by
sacrificing my men’s lives. The poor devils will have had a boat of
their own, I suppose. Show blue lights, will ye, Mr. Prance, and send a
rocket up from time to time.’
They were burning a flare over the quarter-deck rail at that
moment--some turpentine arrangement, that threw out a long flickering
flame and a great coil of smoke from the yawning mouth of the tin
funnel that contained the mixture. It was like watching the ship by
sheet-lightning to see a large part of her amidships and her mainmast
and the pale lights of the mainsail hanging from the yard in the grip
of the gear--to see all this come and go as the flame leapt and faded.
There was a crowd of terrified passengers on the poop, some of them
ladies, hugging themselves in dressing-gowns and shawls; and out of the
heart of the little mob rose the saw-like notes of Colonel Bannister.
‘These collisions,’ I heard him cry, ‘never _can_ take place if a
proper look-out be kept. It is preposterous to argue. I’d compel
the oldest seaman who contradicted me to eat his words. Why, have I
been making the voyage to India four times----’ But the rest of his
observations were drowned in cries of astonishment and alarm from the
ladies as a rocket, discharged close to them, went hissing and shearing
up athwart the howling wind in a stream of fire, breaking on high into
a blood-red ball, that floated swiftly landwards, like an electric
meteor, ghastly against the moonshine, with a wide crimson atmosphere
about it that tinctured the very scud. A moment after a blue light was
burnt over the side from the head of the poop ladder, whereat there
was a general recoil and more shrill exclamations from the ladies. In
fact, these wild mystical lights as it were coming on top of the fancy
of men drowning astern, and colouring the ship with unearthly glares,
and flinging a wonderful complexion of horror upon the night for a
wide space round about the pitching and groaning Indiaman, put such
an element of mystery and fear into the scene that though I was by no
means a new hand at such sea-shows, I will own to shuddering again and
yet again as I overhung the side of the poop, striving to discern any
object that might resemble a boat in the foam-whitened gloom into which
the lugger had slided.
‘What has happened? Everybody is so excited that one can’t get at the
real story.’
I turned quickly, and saw the tall figure of a lady at my side. She was
habited in a cloak, the hood of which was over her head, and darkened
her face almost to the concealment of it, saving her eyes, which shone
large, liquid, with a clear red spot in the depths, from the reflection
of the flare at the quarter-deck bulwark.
I briefly explained, lifting my cap as I gave her her name--Miss
Temple--for I had particularly remarked her as she came aboard at
Gravesend, and asked who she was, though I had seen nothing more of her
down to that moment. I ended my account pointing to the quarter of the
sea where the lugger had disappeared.
‘Thanks for the story,’ she exclaimed, with a sudden note of
haughtiness in her voice, while she kept her eyes, of the rich
blackness of the tropic night-sky, fixed firm and gleaming upon me,
as though she had addressed me in error, and wanted to make sure of
me. She moved as though she would walk off, paused, and said: ‘Poor
creatures! I hope they will be saved. Is our ship injured, do you know?’
‘I believe not,’ said I a little coldly. ‘There may be a rope or two
broken forward perhaps, but there is nothing but the French lugger to
be sorry for.’
‘My aunt, Mrs. Radcliffe,’ said she, ‘has been rendered somewhat
hysterical by the commotion on deck. She is too ill to leave her bed. I
think I may reassure her?’
‘Oh yes,’ I exclaimed. ‘But yonder, abreast of the wheel there, is the
captain to confirm my words.’
She gave me a bow, or rather a curtsey of those days, and walked aft
to address the captain, as I supposed. Instead, she descended the
companion hatch, and I lost sight of her.
A disdainful lady, thought I, but a rare beauty too!--marvellous eyes,
anyhow, to behold by such an illumination as this of rockets and blue
lights, and flying moonshine, and the yellow glimmer of flare-tins.
All this while the ship lay hove-to, her maintopsail to the mast, the
folds of her hanging mainsail sending a low thunder into the wind
as it shook its cloths, the seas breaking in stormy noises from her
bow; but _now_ there fell a dead silence upon the people along her
decks: nothing broke this hush upon the life of the vessel, save the
occasional harsh hissing rush of a rocket piercing the restless noises
of the sea and the whistling of the wind in the rigging. The bulwark
rail was lined with sailors, eagerly looking towards the tail of the
misty wake of the moon, into which the black surges went shouldering
and changing into troubled hills of dull silver. The captain and two
of the mates stood aft, intently watching the water, often putting
themselves into strained hearkening postures, their hands to their
ears. Most of the lady passengers went below, but not to bed, for you
could catch a sight of them through the skylight seated at the table
talking swiftly, often directing anxious glances at the window-glass
through which you could see them. There was one majestic old lady
amongst them with grey hair that looked to be powdered, a hawk’s-bill
nose, an immense bosom, that started immediately from under her
chin. The lamplight flashed in diamonds in her ears, and in rubies
and in stones of value and beauty upon her fingers. She was Colonel
Bannister’s wife, and was apparently not wanting in her husband’s fiery
energy and capacity of taking peppery views of things, if I might judge
by her vehement nods, and the glances she shot around her from her grey
eyes. It was a cabin picture I caught but a glimpse of as I crossed the
deck to take a look to leeward, but one, somehow, that sunk into my
memory, maybe because of the magic-lantern-like look of the interior,
with its brilliant lamps and many-coloured attire of the ladies in
their shawls, dressing-gowns, and what not--standing out upon the eye
amidst the wild dark frame of the seething clamorous night.
All at once there was a loud cry. I rushed back to the weather rail.
‘There’s a boat heading for us, sir--see her, sir? Away yonder, this
side o’ the tumble of the moon’s reflection!’
‘Ay, there she is! It’ll be the lugger’s boat. God, how she dives!’
Twenty shadowy arms pointed in the direction which had been indicated
by the gruff grumbling cries of the sailors. The second mate, Mr.
Cocker, came hastily forward to the break of the poop.
‘Stand by, some of you,’ he shouted, ‘to heave them the end of a line.
Make ready with bowlines to help them over the side.’
I could see the boat clearly now as she rose to the height of a sea,
her black wet side sparkling out an instant to the moonlight ere she
sank out of sight past the ivory white head of the surge sweeping under
her. She seemed to be deep with men; but I could count only two oars.
She was rushed down upon us by the impulse of the sea and wind, and I
felt my heart stand still as she drove bow on into us, whirling round
alongside in a manner to make you look for the wreck of her in staves
washing away under our counter. She was full of people, with women
amongst them--poor creatures, in great white caps and long golden
earrings, the men for the most part in huge fishermen’s boots, and
tasselled caps and jerseys that might have been of any colour in that
light. One could just make these features out, but no more, for the
contents of the boat as it rose soaring and falling alongside were but
a dark huddle of human shapes, writhing and twisting like a mass of
worms in a pot, vociferating to us in the scarce intelligible _patois_
of Gravelines or Calais or Boulogne.
There was no magic in the commands even of British officers to British
sailors to put the least element of calm into the business. It was
not only that at one moment the boat alongside seemed to be hove up
to the Indiaman’s covering-board and that at the next she was rushing
down into a chasm that laid bare many feet of the big ship’s yellow
sheathing: there was the dreadful expectation of the whole of the human
freight being overset and drowning alongside in a breath; there were
the heart-rending shouts of the distracted people; there was the total
inability of captain and mates to make themselves understood. How it
was managed I will not pretend to explain. By some means the boat was
dragged to the gangway, grinding and thumping herself horribly against
the Indiaman’s rolling, stooping, massive side; then bowlines and
ropes in plenty were dangled over or flung into her; and through the
unshipped gangway, illuminated by half-a-dozen lanterns, and crowded by
a hustling mob of sailors and passengers, one after another, the women
and the men--most of the men coming first!--were dragged inboards,
some of them falling flat upon the deck, some dropping on their knees
and crossing themselves; a few of the women weeping passionately, one
of them sobbing in dreadful paroxysms, the others mute as statues, as
though terror and the presence of death had frozen the lifeblood in
them and arrested the very beating of their hearts. Two of them fell
into the sea; but they had lines about them and were dragged up half
dead. They were all of them dripping wet, the men’s sea-boots full of
water; whilst the soaked gowns of the women flooded the deck on which
they stood, as though several buckets of brine had been capsized there.
Old Keeling’s pity for them would not go to the length of introducing
the wretched creatures into the cuddy, to spoil the ship’s fine
carpets and stain and ruin the coverings of the couches. They were
accordingly brought together in the recess under the break of the poop,
where at all events they were sheltered. Hot spirits and water were
given to them along with bread and meat, and this supper the unhappy
creatures ate by the light of the dimly burning lanterns held by the
sailors.
There never was an odder wilder sight than the picture the poor
half-drowned creatures made. Some of the women scarcely once
intermitted their sobs and lamentations, save when they silenced their
throats by a mouthful of food or drink. They were very ugly, dark as
coffee; and their black wet hair streaming like sea-weed upon their
shoulders and brows from under their soaked caps made them look like
witches. The men talked hoarsely and eagerly with many passionate
gestures, which suggested fierce denunciation. The mate coming down
to the booby hatch around which these people were squatting, eating,
drinking, moaning, and jabbering without the least regard to the crowd
of curious eyes which inspected them from the quarter-deck--the mate,
I say, coming down, stood looking a minute at them, and then sent a
glance round, and seeing me, asked if I spoke French.
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but not such French as those people are talking.’
‘We have three passengers,’ said he, ‘who, I am told, are scholars in
that language; but the steward informs me they’re too sea-sick to come
on deck. Just ask these people in such French as you have, if their
captain’s amongst them.’
As he said this, a little old man seated on the hatch-coaming, with a
red nightcap on, immense earrings, and a face of leather puckered into
a thousand wrinkles like the grin of a monkey, looked up at Mr. Prance,
and nodding with frightful energy whilst he struck his bosom with his
clenched fist, cried out: ‘Yash, yash, me capitaine.’
‘Ha!’ said the mate, ‘do you speak English, then?’
‘Yash, yash,’ he roared: ‘me speakee Angleesh.’
Happily he knew enough to save me the labour of interpreting; and
_labour_ it would have been with a vengeance, since, though it was
perfectly certain none amongst them, saving the little monkey-faced
man, comprehended a syllable of the mate’s questions, every time
the small withered chap answered--which he did with extraordinary
convulsions and a vast variety of frantic gesticulations--all the rest
of them broke into speech, the women joining in, and there was such
a hubbub of tongues that not an inch of idea could I have got out of
the distracting row. However, in course of time the leathery manikin
who called himself captain made Mr. Prance understand that the lugger
belonged to Boulogne; that she had the survivors of another lugger on
board, making some thirty-four souls in all, men and women, at the time
of the collision, of which seventeen or eighteen were drowned. After he
had given Mr. Prance these figures, he turned to the others and said
something in a shrill, fierce, rapid voice, whereat the women fell to
shrieking and weeping, whilst many of the men tore their hair, some
going the length of knocking their heads against the cuddy front. It
was a sight to sicken the heart, the more, I think, for the unutterable
element of grotesque farce imported into that dismal tragedy by their
countenances, postures, and behaviour; and having heard and seen
enough, I slipped away on to the poop, with a chill coming into my
very soul to the thought of the drowned bodies out yonder when my eye
went to the sea weltering black to the troubled line of moonshine, and
heaving in ashen luminous billows in that chill path of light.
But long before this, our rockets, blue-lights, and flares had been
seen; and a moment or two after I had gained the poop I spied the
figure of Captain Keeling with a few male passengers at his side
standing at the rail watching a powerful cutter thrashing through it
to us close-hauled, with the water boiling to her leaps, and her big
mainsail to midway high dark with the saturation of the flying brine.
In less than twenty minutes she was rising and falling buoyant as a
seabird abreast of us, with a shadowy figure at her lee rail bawling
with lungs of brass to know what was wrong.
‘I have run down a French lugger,’ shouted Captain Keeling, ‘and have
half her people on board, and must put them ashore at once, for I wish
to proceed.’
‘Right y’are,’ came from the cutter; but with a note of irritation and
disappointment in the cry, as I could not but fancy.
Then followed some wonderful manœuvring. There was only one way of
transshipping the miserable French people, and that was by a yard-arm
whip and a big basket. Hands sprang aloft to prepare the necessary
tackle; Prance meanwhile, from the head of the poop ladder, thundered
the intentions of the Indiaman through a speaking-trumpet to the
cutter. I could see old Keeling stamp from time to time with impatience
as he broke away from the questions of the passengers, one of whom was
Colonel Bannister, into a sharp walk full of grief and irritability.
Meanwhile they had shifted their helm aboard the cutter and got way
upon the fine little craft. I saw her take the weight of the wind
and heel down to the line of her gunwale, then break a dark sea into
boiling milk, leaping the liquid acclivity, as a horse takes a tall
gate, burying herself nose under with the downwards launching rush,
then soaring again to the height of the next billow with full way upon
her. She came tearing and hissing through it as though her coppered
forefoot were of red-hot metal, and when abreast of our lee quarter,
put her helm down, and swept with marvellous grace and precision to
alongside of us, clear of our shearing spars, and there she lay.
It was hard upon midnight when the last basket-load had been lowered
on to her deck. There was no hitch; all went well; a line attached to
the basket enabled the cutter’s people to haul it fair to their decks;
but the terror of the unfortunate Frenchmen was painful to see. The
women got into the basket bravely; but many of the men blankly refused
to enter, and had to be stowed in it by force, our Jacks holding on
till the order to ‘sway away’ was given, when up would go poor Crapaud
shrieking vengeance upon us all, and calling upon the Virgin and saints
for help. In its way it was like a little engagement with an enemy.
Some of the Frenchmen drew knives, and had to be knocked down.
Then, when the last of them was swayed over the side and lowered--‘Are
you all right?’ shouted Captain Keeling to the cutter.
‘All right,’ responded a deep voice, hoarse with rum and weather. ‘I
suppose your owners’ll make the job worth something to us?’
‘Ay, ay,’ answered the captain. ‘Round with your topsail yard, Mr.
Prance. Lively now! this business has cost us half a night as it is.’
In a few minutes the great yards on the main were swung slowly to the
drag of the braces with loud heave-yeos from the sailors, and the ship,
feeling the weight of the wind in the vast dim hollow of the topsail,
leaned with a new impulse of life in her frame and drove half an acre
of foam ahead of her. We had resumed our voyage; and with a sense of
supreme weariness in me following the excitement of the hours, and
chilled to the marrow by my long spell on deck and incessant loiterings
in the keen night-wind, I entered the saloon, called for a tumbler of
grog, and made my way to my berth.