I slept anything but soundly that night, fearing that, if I abandoned
myself too completely to the influence of the drowsy god, I might not
awake early enough in the morning to ensure the accomplishment of all
that was to be done next day--for we had to hoist the boat, make sail,
and traverse some forty-five miles of winding channel through the reef
in order to reach open water before darkness overtook us. But although
I was astir with the first signs of the coming dawn, I found, upon going
out on deck, that Gurney and Saunders were before me. They too, it
appeared, had been too anxious to do more than doze restlessly and
intermittently through the hot night, and finally, as though by mutual
consent, had turned out about an hour before daylight and, after softly
pacing the main deck together, chatting and smoking for about half an
hour, had gone forward, lighted the galley fire, and proceeded to
prepare an early breakfast, in order that we might all be ready to turn-
to the moment that we had light enough to see what we were about. When
I went forward and looked into the galley--the light from which had
attracted my attention the instant that I emerged from the cabin--I was
greeted with the mingled aromas of boiling cocoa and frying bacon, as
well as with the cheery "good morning!" of the two men who were bending
over the galley stove; but I had scarcely had time to exchange greetings
with them when the fourth member of our party, awakened by my movements
while dressing, made her appearance and promptly assumed charge of the
culinary operations. This left the three males of the party free to
tackle the more arduous duties of the day; and we forthwith proceeded to
unrig the boat and make her ready for hoisting. By the time that this
task had been advanced to the point of hooking on and hauling taut the
davit-tackles, we were summoned to breakfast, and in high spirits sat
down to partake of what we hoped would be our last meal but one before
we should find ourselves once more at sea.
The meal over, we proceeded to get the quarter boat hoisted to the
davits, which, heavy boat though she was for three men to handle, we
soon accomplished with the assistance of a couple of watch-tackles, in
the employment of which we had by this time, through much usage, become
experts. Then came the loosing and setting of the canvas. We decided
that, as before, we would rely upon the three topsails and the fore
topmast staysail to carry us to our destination, that being as much
canvas as we could conveniently handle; and an hour and a half sufficed
us to get these sails set to our satisfaction and braced ready for
casting the ship. Then, sending Grace Hartley aft to the wheel, which
she was now able to manipulate as deftly as any of us, Gurney and I
stood by the fore braces, while Saunders, armed with an axe, proceeded
to the forecastle and stood by to sever the hawser by which the ship
rode. At the proper moment the word was given, the axe fell once,
twice, and we were once more adrift, the ship gathering stern-way and
paying off with her helm hard a-starboard and the port fore braces
flattened in. She made a stern board until she was heading about south-
south-west, when the squared main and mizen topsails began to fill and
checked her, whereupon the head yards were squared, the staysail sheet
hauled over, the helm steadied, and the old _Mercury_ began to forge
ahead, not to stop again, as we hoped, until she should arrive in Sydney
Harbour.
And now the most ticklish part of our task lay before us, for we had to
navigate some forty-five miles of narrow, winding channel, and negotiate
several very awkward places, where the slightest mistake meant disaster,
before we should find ourselves once more rising and falling in safety
on the swells of the open Pacific. But we had talked the matter over a
dozen times or more before reaching this stage of our adventure, and
knew exactly what was best to be done. We therefore proceeded forthwith
to do it, for there is no time for hesitation when a ship is under way
in narrow waters; whatever has to be done must be done smartly and on
the instant. The channel which we had to traverse, and toward the
entrance of which the ship was now heading, started by heading due west
for a short distance, then it swerved to about south-west, then looked
up to about south-by-east, and thence, undulating slightly a point or so
east or west, trended south for the remainder of its length. Now, there
were two or three short reaches of channel, the longest of them not much
more than a mile in length, where we should find the wind shy enough to
necessitate the ship being braced sharp up on the port tack to enable
her to negotiate them successfully. But it was necessary for one of us
to be aloft to con the ship, and as it was obvious that the other two
could not brace round the yards of a ship of the _Mercury's_ size, we
were no sooner free of our anchor than, although the ship was at the
moment running off square before the wind, we sprang to the braces, and
braced the yards sharp up on the port tack, in readiness for the
negotiation of the reaches of which I have spoken. For, while the ship
would run before the wind with her yards braced sharp up, she would not
sail close-hauled with her yards square; and we had therefore settled it
that the proper thing to do was to provide for the difficult points at
once. By the time that this was done we were so close to the western
extremity of the basin, and the entrance of the channel, that it became
necessary for me to jump aloft at once, while Gurney relieved Grace
Hartley at the wheel, and Saunders stood in the waist, with his eye on
me in the fore topmast crosstrees, ready to pass the word from me to the
helmsman, from whom I was hidden by the main and mizen topsails.
I am bound to admit that when I reached the crosstrees, and noted the
speed with which the ship was sliding along in that perfectly smooth
water, under the impulsion of a fine brisk easterly breeze, and observed
the narrowness and tortuousness of the channel that we had to traverse,
winding hither and thither through that vast expanse of reef, my heart
almost quailed within me, and I felt inclined to doubt whether we three
males possessed the ability, the skill, the quickness of eye, the
readiness and strength of hand, to take the ship in safety through that
apparently endless, twisting channel. But the feeling was merely
momentary; an old adage flashed into my mind to the effect that one need
never trouble about crossing a bridge until one comes to it; also that
it is very unwise to meet troubles halfway. I told myself that I would
not worry about the difficulties and dangers ahead, but would stand up
there in the crosstrees and deal with them, one at a time, as we came to
them. And so I did, with the gratifying result that when the sun's
lower rim had reached to within a finger's breadth of the western
horizon the _Mercury_ slid out past the southern edge of the reef and
made her first curtsy as she once more dipped to the swell of the open
ocean, having triumphantly negotiated and overcome every one of the
difficulties of that endless rock-bound channel. I sprang into the
topgallant rigging and shinned up to the royal yard, from which
elevation I was able to watch, over the head of the main topsail, the
great black expanse of reef receding on either quarter, until the sun
plunged beneath the horizon in a blaze of purple, crimson, and gold, and
then I descended to the deck by way of the backstay, and walked aft to
exchange congratulations with the little group of two men and a woman,
who stood clustered about the wheel watching the evanishment of that
strange rock prison in the fast-gathering gloom of the tropical night.
Before descending from aloft I had taken the precaution to fling one
long, lingering, all-embracing glance round the horizon ahead, from one
quarter to the other, and had pretty well satisfied myself that there
were no dangers lurking in the road along which we were going, no white
curl of surf to warn us of the existence of treacherous sunken reefs.
Our next act, therefore, was to bring the ship as close to the wind as
she would lie, on the port tack, lash the wheel, adjust the after braces
in such a way that the craft would steer herself, and then all go below
to partake of the very excellent meal that Grace Hartley had prepared
specially to celebrate the occasion of our happy escape from the reef.
The ensuing fortnight was a period absolutely barren of events, the
weather remaining fine and the wind steady during the whole time, so
that we had nothing to do but just to permit the ship to drive steadily
along to the southward, hour after hour, and day after day, at an
average speed of about four knots. It is true that during the course of
that fortnight we sighted and passed several islands, at varying
distances; and in one case we hove-to for about half an hour to permit a
canoe with half a dozen natives to come alongside and barter their load
of fruit for a few feet of brass wire and a handful of glass beads. But
we determined to anchor nowhere, if we could help it; for we were now
all anxiety to reach our destination as quickly as possible. The care
of so big a ship was a heavy responsibility to rest upon the shoulders
of three men--and a girl, and we desired to free ourselves of it without
a moment's unnecessary delay. And, quite apart from that, the monotony
of the thing was beginning to get upon our nerves. For Gurney and Grace
Hartley it was doubtless well enough; so long as they could be together
it mattered little to them to what length the voyage might be spun out,
but so far as I was concerned--and I think I might also answer for
Saunders--I was beginning to crave for the sight of fresh faces, the
sound of new voices, and the stir and bustle and excitement of life
ashore.
At length, on our sixteenth day out from the reef, in latitude 1 degree
42 minutes north, the wind showed signs of failing us; and by sunset,
that night, it had fallen stark calm, with a rapidly subsiding swell;
yet the sky was clear, the barometer high, and, in short, there was
every indication that we were booked for a long spell of calm weather
before we should find ourselves to the southward of the Equator. So
indeed it proved; for I believe I may say with absolute truth that
never, for five consecutive minutes during the ten succeeding days, had
we sufficient wind to extinguish the flame of a candle. True, there
were occasional evanescent breathings that came stealing along from
nowhere in particular, gently ruffling a few superficial yards of the
ocean's glassy surface into faintest blue for a brief two or three
minutes at a time, and then vanishing again; but during the whole of
that period we never had enough wind to keep our canvas fully distended
for a whole minute. Or course, being short-handed, we could not resort
to the various devices usually adopted in a fully manned craft for
profiting by those transient breathings. The yards were altogether too
heavy for us to attempt to swing them to meet every fickle draught of
air that we saw coming toward us; it was therefore only the most
favourable that we made any effort to utilise; yet, despite this, we
somehow contrived to drift daily a little farther south; it might be,
perhaps, no more than a mile, or it might rise to as much as five or six
miles. Everything depending upon whether the favourable zephyrs
happened to hit the ship, or whether they passed her by--sometimes at a
distance of only a few yards.
When we first ran into this belt of calm our horizon was bare, neither
land nor ship being in sight--indeed we had not sighted so much as one
solitary sail since leaving the island; but at dawn on the sixth morning
of the calm we sighted the mastheads of a small craft far away down in
the southern board, which, upon being inspected from aloft, proved to be
a schooner of, possibly, a hundred or one hundred and twenty tons
measurement. During the day it became apparent that she was bound to
the northward, for she assiduously utilised every chance breath of wind
that touched her to work her way in that direction, while we did what we
could to make way in the opposite direction, with the result that by
sunset we had shortened the distance between us by three or four miles.
The succeeding four days were simply repetitions in all respects of the
same wearisome, monotonous state of things; yet the way in which the
_Mercury_ and the strange schooner insensibly drew ever nearer to each
other during that time was singularly illustrative of what could be
accomplished in the way of progress by sailing-ships, even in the
embrace of what was to all intents and purposes a stark calm, by active
and intelligent officers. It is true that we in the _Mercury_ did but
little toward the abbreviation of the distance between the two vessels,
for the reason already mentioned, yet when the tenth day of the calm
dawned the schooner was hull-up in the southern board, some six miles
distant from us.
None but those who have endured a long spell of calm in the vicinity of
the Equator can have the faintest idea of the deadly monotony of the
experience. Day after day comes and goes, bringing a cloudless sky of
dazzling blue, in the midst of which circles a merciless sun, from the
scorching rays of which there is no escape, even under an awning; for
the stoutest canvas seems incapable of completely intercepting the fiery
darts that cause the pitch to bubble up out of the deck seams, and heat
metal and dark-painted wood to a temperature high enough to blister the
hand unwarily laid upon either. Even though an awning be spread, and
shelter sought thereunder, those burning rays are not to be evaded; for
they flash up from the mirror-like surface of the sea with a power which
is scarcely to be distinguished from that exerted by those which fall
direct from the great luminary himself. As to going below in order to
escape the arrows of the fiery archer, the thing is not to be thought
of; for the whole interior of the ship is, at such times, simply an
oven, the air of which is too hot to breathe! Under such circumstances
with what eagerness does the long-enduring seaman scan the polished
surface of the sleeping ocean in search of the little smudge of faint,
evanescent blue, the cat's-paw that betrays the presence of some
wandering eddy in the stagnant air which, even though it be too feeble
and insignificant to move the ship by so much as a single inch, may at
least afford his fevered body the momentary relief of a suggestion of
comparative coolness. And how often does the panting and perspiring
officer of the deck drag his weary, enervated frame to the skylight in
the almost despairing hope that he may detect a depression of the
mercury in the barometric tube, giving the promise of a coming change,
only to turn away again with a weary, disappointed sigh.
It was under such circumstances as these that, during the forenoon of
the tenth day of the calm, Gurney, upon examining the barometer,
reported a concavity in the surface of the mercury, which, as we all
knew, was the first indication of a tendency to fall; and a falling
barometer of course meant a change of weather, which, in its turn, meant
wind, from what quarter we scarcely cared, so long as it came with
strength enough to fill our canvas and give us steerage-way. Yet the
change was long in coming, for the fall of the mercury was so slow as to
be all but undistinguishable, while up till noon the only difference
that could be detected in the aspect of the sky was a certain subtle
thickening of the atmosphere, that robbed the blue of its exquisite
clarity, and reduced the sun to a shapeless blazing; mass that could be
gazed at without bringing tears to the eyes, although there was thus far
no appreciable alleviation of the scorching heat of the rays that he
showered down upon us. But there was an added quality of closeness in
the air that caused one literally to gasp for breath occasionally, while
the slightest exertion--even that of moving from one part of the deck to
another--induced instant profuse perspiration. So hot, indeed, was it
that with one accord we decided against cooking any food that day, the
idea of hot viands of any kind being absolutely repulsive to us all, and
we accordingly dined all together upon the poop, under the shelter of
the awning, upon such cold food as the steward's pantry afforded.
It was about four bells in the afternoon watch when the upper edge of a
great bank of livid purple cloud began to heave itself up above the
north-western horizon; but when once it had risen into sight its
progress was rapid--so rapid, indeed, that within an hour of its first
appearance it had soared high enough to blot out the sun, to our intense
relief, for with the disappearance of the luminary we were at once freed
from the scorching of his beams, although the closeness of the
atmosphere became intensified, rather than otherwise. Of course there
was no mystery as to what we were to expect; we were undoubtedly in for
a first-class tropical thunderstorm, with its usual accompaniments of
torrential rain and, very probably, a sharp squall of wind that might
perhaps last half an hour or so, and, if we were in luck, end in a
breeze that would carry us across the Line. The moment, therefore, that
the sun was hidden we proceeded to make our preparations for the welcome
change, beginning by striking the awning, following this by clewing up
and furling the mizen topsail, and winding up by close-reefing the fore
and main topsails. This task, which kept us all busy until close upon
eight bells (that is, four o'clock in the afternoon), left the ship
under close-reefed fore and main topsails and fore topmast staysail,
which was snug canvas enough to enable a vessel, even as short-handed as
the _Mercury_ then was, to face anything like the weather which we had
reason to expect. Meanwhile, as we found time to notice, the schooner
had followed our example and, long before our preparations were
complete, had been stripped of everything except her boom-foresail.
By the time that our labours had come to an end, and we were once more
free to sit down and await the issue of events, the pall of thundercloud
had overspread the entire visible heavens, from horizon to horizon,
enshrouding the scene in a kind of murky twilight, under which the
ocean, undulating sluggishly in long, low, irregular folds, like the
breathings of a sleeping giant, gleamed pallid and lustreless as a sea
of molten lead. The atmosphere was still oppressively close, but it was
no longer as deadly stagnant as it had been during the earlier hours of
the day; for, at intervals, the vane at our main-royal masthead, which
hitherto had drooped heavy as a sodden deck swab, save for the swaying
motion imparted to it by the lift of the ship to the heave of the
scarcely visible swell, lifted and fluttered feebly for a second or two,
pointing now this way, and anon in some other direction, showing that,
away up aloft there, and as yet too high to reach and stir the surface
of the sea, the air currents were awakening under the brooding influence
of the coming storm. These movements occurred at first at long
intervals, and were of the most evanescent character; but the intervals
rapidly shortened, and within an hour of the occurrence of the first
manifestation of atmospheric movement it had increased to such an extent
as to cause our topsails to rustle and fill, or fall aback, for a
moment, while, a little later still, we could feel the light breathings
upon our faces, and even note their light touch here and there upon the
glassy surface of the water.