By the time that all this had been accomplished, the wind had fallen
away to a dead calm, and the only sounds audible were the creaking and
groaning of the ship's timbers, the loud rattle of the cabin doors below
upon their hooks, the wash of the sea alongside and under the counter,
the constant irritating _jerk-jerk_ of the tiller chains, and the
violent rustle and slatting of the staysails, as the _Dolphin_ rolled
her channels under in the long, oily swell that was now running. But,
so far as the aspect of the sky was concerned, there was no more sign of
the threatened storm than there had been when I first went on deck that
morning--except that, maybe, the haze had thickened somewhat, rendering
our horizon still more circumscribed, and the heat had increased to such
an extent that, as Keene had remarked, one would gladly have gone
overboard to escape it but for the sharks, several of which were
cruising round us, while three monsters persistently hung under our
counter in the shadow of the ship's hull, hungrily ogling those of us
who chanced to lean over the taffrail to get a glimpse of them. Yet,
when, for want of something better to do, Jack Keene and I got a shark
hook and, baiting it with a highly flavoured piece of pork out of the
harness cask, sought to inveigle one of the monsters into swallowing it,
they disdained to even so much as look at it, merely glancing upward at
us, when we deftly dropped the bait upon one of their broad, shovel
noses, as though to say:
"No, no, my hearties! No rancid pork for us, thank you, when, by
exercising a little patience, we may, with luck, get a chance to learn
what one of you jokers tastes like." The enervating effect of the heat
seemed to be as strongly revealed in them as it was in ourselves.
The sun still flamed in the heavens when, shortly before noon, Jack and
I brought our sextants on deck with the object of measuring his meridian
altitude above the horizon; but we were only able to obtain a very
approximate and wholly useless result, for, when we came to try, we
found that the sun appeared in our instruments merely as a shapeless
glare of light, while the horizon was wholly indistinguishable. Then,
by imperceptible degrees, the sun, like the horizon, became obliterated,
and the atmosphere stealthily darkened, as though a continuous
succession of curtains of grey gauze were being interposed between us
and the sky. Meanwhile the barometer was still persistently declining,
although not quite so rapidly as during the early hours of the morning.
It was about six bells in the afternoon watch when, with a sudden
darkening of the sky, that came upon us like the gloom of night, it
began to rain--a regular tropical deluge, sluicing down upon us in
sheets, as though the bottom of a cloud had dropped out; and within less
than a minute our decks were more than ankle-deep in warm fresh water,
and our scuppers were running full. The downpour lasted for perhaps a
minute and a half, and then ceased as abruptly as though a tap had been
turned off, and we heard the shower passing away to the northward of us,
leaving us with streaming decks and dripping canvas and rigging. But,
although the rain had come and gone again in the space of a couple of
minutes, the darkness intensified rather than otherwise, and presently
we heard a muttering of distant thunder away down in the southern
quarter, followed, after a while, by a further dash of rain, lasting for
a few seconds only.
Then, all in a moment, and without any further warning, the blackness
overhead was riven by the most appallingly vivid flash of lightning that
I had ever seen, accompanied--not followed--by a crash of thunder that
temporarily deafened all hands of us and caused the ship to quiver and
tremble from stem to stern. Then, while we were all standing agape, our
ears deafened by the thunder and our eyes blinded by the glare of the
lightning, a fierce gust of hot wind swept over us, filling our two
staysails with a report like that of a cannon and laying the ship over
to her sheer-strake. Tasker, who was again officer of the watch, at
once sprang to the wheel and assisted the helmsman to put it hard up;
but almost before the ship had begun to gather way the first fierceness
of the gust had passed, leaving us little more than a fresh breeze. I
therefore went aft and shouted to them--for they were as deaf as I was--
to bring the vessel up to her course again, when we began to move
through the water at a speed of some five knots.
That first terrible flash of lightning and crash of thunder was,
however, only the beginning of the most awful electric storm that it has
ever been my fate to witness, the sky, now black as night, being rent in
half a dozen different directions at once by fierce, baleful flashes,
green, blue, crimson, and sun-bright, while the bombarding of the
thunder was absolutely terrifying, even to us who were by this time
growing quite accustomed to tropical storms. With it there came
frequent short, sharp, intermittent bursts of rain that swept across our
decks, stinging the exposed skin like shot, and enshrouding everything
beyond a couple of fathoms away in impenetrable obscurity. Now, too,
there came, at irregular but quickly recurring intervals, savage gusts
of wind that smote the ship as though she had been but a child's toy,
heeling her down until her lee rail was awash, and holding her thus for
two or three minutes at a time, then easing up for a short space, the
"easing up" intervals, however, steadily growing more abbreviated, while
the gusts that invariably followed them rapidly grew in intensity and
fury, until after the passage of one that had pinned us down for three
or four minutes, with our lee sheer-poles buried in the smother, I
thought that the time had arrived to heave-to, and gave the order to do
so. Nor was I any too soon; for the sea was rapidly rising, and a
quarter of an hour later we probably could not have accomplished the
feat without having had our decks swept. The gale now rapidly increased
in intensity, the gusts of wind ever growing stronger and more furious,
and succeeding each other more rapidly, until at length the intervals
between them became so brief as to be practically imperceptible, the
strength of the wind now being equal to that of a heavy gale, and
momentarily growing stronger as gust after gust swooped down upon us.
The blinding, drenching showers that occasionally swept us were no
longer composed of fresh water only, for there was a strong mingling of
salt-water in them that was none other than the tops of the waves, torn
off by the terrific blasts of wind and hurled along horizontally in the
form of vast sheets of spray. The sea, meanwhile, was rising with
astounding rapidity, taking into consideration the fact that, as just
stated, the height of the combers was greatly reduced by the enormous
volumes of water that were scooped up from the ocean's surface by the
fury of the wind; moreover the sea was short, steep, and irregular, much
more nearly resembling the breakers on a coast in shallow water, than
the long, regular, majestically moving seas of the open ocean. The
_Dolphin_, therefore, despite her beautiful model and the reduction of
her tophamper, was beginning to make exceedingly bad weather of it,
frequently burying herself to her foremast, and careening so heavily
that during some of her lee rolls it was impossible to maintain one's
footing on deck except by holding on to something.
At length, about four bells in the first watch, the lightning, which had
hitherto almost continuously illuminated the atmosphere, suddenly ceased
altogether, and the night grew intensely dark, the only objects
remaining visible being the faintly phosphorescent heads of the seas,
flashing into view and gleaming ghostly for a moment before they were
torn into spray by the violence of the wind and whirled away through the
air to leeward. Then, with almost equal suddenness, there came a
positively startling lull in the strength of the wind, and the ship--
which had for some hours been laying over to it so steeply that movement
about her decks was only to be achieved with great circumspection and by
patiently awaiting the arrival of one's opportunity--suddenly rose
almost to an even keel. I seized the chance thus afforded me to claw my
way to the skylight and glance through it at the barometer, illuminated
by the wildly swaying lamp which the steward had lighted when darkness
fell, but, to my intense disappointment, the mercury, which had steadily
been shrinking all day, exhibited a further drop since the index had
been set at eight o'clock that evening.
"We have not yet seen the worst of it," I shouted to Tasker, who,
although it was now his watch below, had elected to remain on deck and
bear me company. "The glass is still going down."
"I'm very sorry to hear it, Mr Fortescue," he answered. "I don't like
the look of things at all. The ship has been most terrible uneasy for
several hours now, and I'm afraid we shall find that she's been
strainin' badly. It might not be amiss to sound the well; and if, as I
fear, we find that she's been takin' water in through her seams, I'd
advise--"
His further speech was cut short by a terrific blast of wind that
swooped down upon us like a howling, screaming fiend, without a moment's
warning. So violent was it that Tasker and I were both swept off our
feet and dashed to the deck, where I brought up against the cabin
companion with a crash that all but knocked the senses out of me, while
the gunner's mate disappeared in the direction of the lee scuppers. The
yelling and screaming of the wind was absolutely appalling, the volume
of sound being such that nothing else could be heard above it; and in
the midst of the din I became vaguely conscious that the ship was going
over until she lay upon her beam ends, with her deck almost
perpendicular, and the water up to the level of her hatchways.
For a few seconds I lay where I was, on the upturned side of the
companion, listening to the water pouring into the cabin with every lee
roll of the ship, and endeavouring to pull together my scattered
faculties; then, dimly realising that something must be done to relieve
the ship if we would not have her founder beneath us, I scrambled to my
feet and, seizing a rope's end that came lashing about me, dragged
myself up to the weather rail, clinging to which I slowly and painfully
worked my way forward, shouting for the carpenter as I did so. At
length, arrived at the fore rigging, I came upon a small group of men
who had somehow contrived to climb up to windward and out upon the
ship's upturned side, where they were now desperately hacking away with
their knives at the lanyards of the weather fore rigging.
"That's right, lads!" I exclaimed, whipping out my own knife and
lending a hand; "we must cut away the masts and get the ship upright
again, or she will go down under us. Where is the carpenter? Let him
bring along his axe. He will do more good in one minute than we can in
ten."
"I'm afraid, sir, as Chips has gone overboard with some more when the
ship was hove down. But I'll see if I can get into the fo'c's'le and
lay my hand upon his axe," answered one of the men.
"Do so by all means," I returned; "and be quick about it. I would go
myself, but you will know better than I where to find the axe; and even
moments are precious just now."
They were, indeed; for it was easy to tell, by the feel of the ship,
that she was becoming waterlogged, and every gallon of water that now
poured into her seriously decreased our chances of saving her. But it
was bad news to learn that the carpenter, "with some more" men, had been
lost overboard when the ship was thrown upon her beam-ends; yet, when I
came to recall the suddenness of the event, the surprising thing was
that any of us had survived it. This reminded me of Tasker, and set me
wondering whether he had been as fortunate as myself, or whether that
last awful lurch had been as fatal to him as it had been to some others
among us.
Meanwhile we continued to hack away with our knives at the lanyards, and
presently, after what appeared to have been a terribly protracted
interval, but which was probably not more than a couple of minutes, the
last lanyard parted with a twang, and the next instant, with a crash
heard even through the terrific hubbub of the gale, the foremast snapped
close off by the deck and plunged, with all attached, into the boil to
leeward. Then we breathlessly waited, hoping that, thus relieved, the
ship would recover herself, and for a moment it almost seemed that she
would do so; but just at the critical moment the gale swooped down
heavier than ever, and at the same instant an extra heavy sea struck
her, and down she lay again, as though too tired to struggle further.
"It is no good, men," I cried, "she won't rise. Lay aft, and cut away
the mainmast also. It is our only chance!" And, therewith, we all
crawled along the ship's side--escaping being washed off or blown
overboard only by a series of miracles, as it seemed to me--until we
arrived at the main chains, where we had something to cling to, and
where the channel-piece partially sheltered us. Here we at once got to
work with all our energy upon the weather main lanyards, and, the man
with the axe presently joining us, in a few minutes the mainmast also
went over the side.
"Now, inboard with you, men, as smart as you like," I cried. "If she is
going to rise at all she may do so quite suddenly, in which case we run
the risk of being hove overboard if we remain here."
We all scrambled in on deck, steadying ourselves by such of the running
rigging as we could lay hold of; and we had scarcely done so when the
hull partially recovered its upright position, not quite so suddenly as
I had expected, yet with a quick righting movement that left our decks
knee-deep in water. I sprang to the companion and strove to close the
burst-open doors and so prevent any further influx of water to the
cabin; but the heavy washing sounds that came up from below told me that
my efforts were already too late to be of any service, for the cabin
seemed to be flooded to almost half the height of the companion ladder,
and the sluggish motions of the ship told me eloquently enough that she
was perilously near to a foundering condition. I therefore rallied the
men and bade them get to work at the pumps forthwith; and it was then
that I discovered, to my horror, that, of our complement of sixty, we
had lost no fewer than fourteen, including my messmate, poor Jack Keene,
and Tasker, the gunner's mate, all of whom must have gone overboard when
the vessel was thrown down on her beam-ends! It was a most deplorable
affair, and I was especially grieved at the loss of my light-hearted
chum; but that was not the moment for indulgence in useless lamentation,
and I busied myself in doing what might be possible to provide for the
safety of the ship.
First of all I got a strong gang to work at the pumps in two relays,
each taking a spell of ten minutes pumping, followed by an equal length
of time for rest. When I had fairly started these, and saw the water
gushing in a clear stream from the spouts of both pumps, I set the rest
to work cutting away all the rigging which still held the wreckage of
the masts attached to the hull, leaving the fore and fore-topmast stays
untouched, my intention being that the drift of the hull should bring
the wreckage under the bows, where, being held fast by the stays, it
should form a sort of floating anchor to which the ship should ride head
to wind and sea. Thus we might hope that she would no longer ship water
in such quantities as to threaten her safety. After nearly an hour's
hard labour we succeeded, during which it appeared to me that the men
were making little or no impression upon the amount of water in the
hold. But, as I had hoped, when once we had brought the hull head to
wind she no longer shipped water in any very alarming quantities; and
after watching her carefully for some minutes I came to the conclusion
that we might safely venture to open the after hatchway and supplement
the efforts of those at the pumps by baling with buckets.
Before starting the pumps I had taken the precaution of having the well
sounded, with the result that we had discovered the depth of water in
the ship's interior to be three feet ten inches, as nearly as could be
ascertained; but the violent motions of the hull had rendered anything
like really accurate sounding an impossibility, and the same cause now
precluded us from ascertaining with certainty whether the leak was
gaining upon the pumps or _vice-versa_. One thing was perfectly
certain, and that was that if the pumps were gaining upon the leak at
all, it was but slowly. If that should prove to be the case, it would
mean that there was something the matter more serious than the mere
straining of the ship; possibly a butt or a hood-end had been started.
It was by this time close upon midnight, and there were times when I
almost succeeded in persuading myself that it was not blowing quite so
hard as it had been, although the difference--if difference there were--
was certainly not very strongly marked; the sea, however, still
continued to rise, and was now running higher than I had ever before
seen it. Yet the poor, sorely battered _Dolphin_ rode it reasonably
well, all things considered; although there were times when the water in
her interior, happening to become concentrated in the fore part of her
just as she should be rising to a sea, pinned her down by the head to a
dangerous extent, causing the sea to come in, green, unbroken, and like
a miniature mountain, over her bows. When this threatened to occur it
became necessary to watch her narrowly, and if the danger seemed to be
imminent we hurriedly replaced the after hatches, otherwise we should
very quickly have been swamped.
When the pumping gangs had been at work for about an hour they
complained of exhaustion, and I accordingly relieved them to the extent
of setting them to work with the buckets and putting two fresh gangs at
the pumps; yet, although these men worked pretty energetically, it soon
became evident that we were not gaining anything upon the leak, and as
time passed on it became exceedingly doubtful whether the leak were not
rather gaining upon us. Moreover, as the sea continued to rise the
vessel's movements became more laboured, and she again began to take the
water aboard in such dangerous quantities that at length we were
reluctantly compelled to abandon our baling operations, and close the
hatches to prevent the heavy seas from reaching her interior.
In this fashion the seemingly endless night at length wore itself away
and the lowering dawn came, disclosing to us the true seriousness of our
condition. There we were, aweary, hollow-eyed, haggard-looking little
band, sodden to the very bones of us with long hours of exposure to the
pitiless buffeting of rain and sea, our flesh salt-encrusted, our eyes
bloodshot, our hands raw and bleeding with the severe and protracted
work at the pumps, adrift in mid-ocean upon a mastless, sorely battered,
and badly leaking hulk, with her ballast shifted and a heavy list,
tossed helplessly upon a furiously raging sea that seemed instinct with
a relentless determination to overwhelm us, toiling and fighting
doggedly against the untiring elements, in the hope that, perchance, if
our strength held out, we might keep the now crazy, straining, and
complaining fabric beneath us afloat long enough to afford us some
chance of saving our lives. Yet the hope was, after all, but a slender
one; for with the coming of daylight we were able to see that our plight
was very considerably worse than we had dreamed it to be during the
hours of darkness; for _then_ we had believed that the loss of our masts
and the springing of a somewhat serious leak represented the sum total
of our misfortunes; while _now_ we saw, to our unspeakable dismay, that,
with the solitary exception of the longboat, the whole of our boats were
so badly damaged as to be altogether beyond our ability to repair; of
two of them, indeed, nothing save the stem and stern remained dangling
forlornly from the davit tackles. But that, bad though it was, was not
the worst; for it was no longer possible for us to blind ourselves to
the fact that the leak was gaining upon us inexorably, and that, even
though we should continue to toil with unabated energy, we could not
keep the ship afloat longer than a few hours more, at the utmost.
And then what were we to do? The longboat, fine boat though she was,
when stocked with even a meagre supply of provisions and water, would
not accommodate more than twenty-five men, and I gravely doubted whether
she would live ten minutes in such a sea as was then running, with half
that number in her. Still, with the exception of such a raft as we
might be able to put together, she was all that we had, and half an hour
of daylight sufficed to show me that no time must be lost in making
preparations to quit the slowly foundering ship. Yet it would not do
for us to leave the pumps for a moment; one gang must, at all costs, be
kept hard at work pumping out as much as possible of the water that was
pouring in through the open seams, otherwise the leak would gain upon us
so rapidly that the ship would settle from under us long before we were
ready to face such a catastrophe. I therefore at once set about the
formulating of my plans and carrying them into effect. First of all,
while one gang kept the pump-brakes clanking and the clear water
spouting out upon our streaming deck, I got another gang to work at
launching the guns overboard as the roll of the ship permitted--and
this, I was glad to see, eased the poor labouring craft quite
perceptibly. This done, all hands, except those at the pumps, went to
breakfast, the meal consisting of hot coffee sweetened with molasses,
and ship's biscuit, more or less sodden with salt-water--for with the
coming of daylight and the preparation of breakfast the unwelcome
discovery had been made that the salt-water had got at the provisions
and gone far toward spoiling them. Then, as soon as the first gang had
finished breakfast, they relieved those at the pumps, who in their turn
took breakfast and next proceeded to clear away the longboat and prepare
her for launching, by providing her with a proper supply of oars and
thole-pins, her rudder and tiller, masts and sails, and then carefully
stowing her stock of water and provisions. But when all this was done
it was still blowing too hard--although the worst of the gale seemed to
be over--and the sea was altogether too rough to allow of our attempting
to launch her. We therefore next got to work upon a raft, first of all
lashing all our spare spars together as a sort of foundation, and then,
upon the top of this, lashing the hen-coops, gratings, a few planks that
the carpenter had stowed away down below, and, finally, some lengths of
bulwark that we cut away for the purpose. This raft, when completed,
was a fairly roomy affair, affording space enough to stow away some
thirty people, together with a good supply of provisions and water,
which we now proceeded to get up from below and stow; the cook,
meanwhile, industriously boiling as much beef and pork as he could crowd
into his coppers. Then we knocked off and piped to dinner; and while we
were getting this--probably the last meal of which we should ever
partake aboard the poor old _Dolphin_--our hearts were gladdened by a
sudden burst of sunshine breaking through the clouds, and half an hour
later the sky to windward was clear, the sun was shining brilliantly and
pouring his welcome warmth upon our chilled bodies and saturated
clothing, while the gale had broken and was fast moderating, having
already declined to the strength of a double-reefed topsail breeze. The
sea, too, was no longer raging like a boiling cauldron; yet, even so, it
was still too heavy to justify us in attempting to launch either the
longboat or the raft.
And now, at the very moment when it was most necessary that the crew
should preserve an orderly and obedient disposition, they suddenly broke
into open mutiny, flatly refusing to work any longer at the pumps;
declaring that the ship was good for at least another hour, and that
before that had passed we should all be safely away from her; that there
was no sense in wanting to keep the ship afloat longer than there was
any absolute need for; and that the time had now arrived when they must
begin to think of saving their own personal belongings. When I
attempted to remonstrate with them and point out the folly of their
behaviour they became virulently abusive, and declared that if I wanted
the pumps kept going I might keep them going myself--and this although I
had already done considerably more than my fair share of that back-
breaking labour. Therewith they abandoned the pumps and betook
themselves forward to the forecastle, from which there shortly afterward
came floating to my horrified ears loud peals of maudlin laughter,
mingled with snatches of ribald songs and coarse jests, whereby I came
to know, all too late, that, while getting up the provisions from below,
some of them must have broken into the spirit-room and possessed
themselves of a very considerable supply of rum, upon which they were
now fast drinking themselves into a condition of reckless indifference
to the awful danger that threatened them. Anything, I thought, was
better than this; therefore, having first gone down below and brought up
the chronometer, my sextant, and a chart of the Atlantic, and stowed the
whole carefully in the stern-sheets of the longboat, loaded my pistols,
and girded my sword to my side, I went forward to the fore-scuttle and,
putting my head into it, shouted in as cheery a tone as I could summon:
"Now then, lads, tumble up on deck, all hands of you. We have still a
great deal to do, and very little time to do it in; therefore let us see
about getting the longboat into the water, and the raft over the side.
There will be time enough to rest when we are safe away from the wreck."
"All ri', schipper, don' you worry," bawled a great hulking Dutchman in
reply. "Dere's blendy of dime yet; and ve're nod going do move undil
ve've vinished dhis grog."
Then another--an American this time--took up the tale, shouting, "Go
'way, little man, go 'way! Wha' d'you mean, anyway, by comin' here and
disturbin' gen'lemen when they're busy? Come in and have a drink with
us, youngster, just to show that you're not stuck up. I guess we're all
equals in this dandy little barkie; yes, sirree! I'm a free-born
'Murican, I am, an' just as good as you or any other blamed Britisher,
and don' you forget it. So, if you won' come in an' have a drink, take
your ugly-lookin' mug out o' the daylight, d'ye hear?"
To emphasise this polite request the man seized a heavy sea boot from
the forecastle deck and hove it at me, with so poor an aim that instead
of hitting me he dashed it into the face of an Englishman who happened
at the moment to be drinking rum out of a pannikin. The blow dashed the
pannikin out of the man's hand, and splashed the fiery spirit all over
his face and into his eyes; and the next instant, with a low, fierce
growl of concentrated ferocity, he sprang to his feet and struck the
free-born 'Murican a smashing blow under the chin that sent him
sprawling.
"You have no time to waste in fighting, lads," I cried, for I felt that
the ship was fast settling under our feet. But my voice was completely
drowned in the babel of angry yells that instantly arose, for it
appeared that the men were, after their own fashion, rivals for
leadership in the forecastle, and each man had his own partisans, every
one of whom instantly took up the quarrel of his own favourite, and in
another moment the whole of them were at each others' throats, like so
many quarrelsome dogs.
"Let the drunken, mutinous brutes fight it out among themselves," I
muttered disgustedly as I turned and walked away. "They will get a
sobering-up before very long that will astonish them, or I am greatly
mistaken!"
As I walked aft I could tell, by the feel of the ship, that her race was
nearly run--although I did not at that moment dream how very near to her
end she was--and I paused abreast of the longboat to satisfy myself that
she was quite ready for launching out through the wide gap that we had
made in the bulwarks when cutting them away to provide material for the
construction of the raft. The gripes, I saw, had been cast off, and the
boat was supported solely by her chocks, upon which she stood upright on
the main hatchway. Suddenly, stooping down, a small spot of bright
light in the deep shadow under the boat caught my eye, and looking
closer I saw that some careless rascal had omitted to put in the plug,
and that the bright spot of light was caused by the sun shining down
through the unplugged hole in the boat's bottom. With a muttered
objurgation of the fellow's carelessness, I climbed into the boat and,
stooping down, sought for the plug. I was seeking for perhaps two or
three minutes before I found it, but as I was about to abandon the
search, and hunt for a suitable cork out of which to cut another, my eye
fell upon the missing plug, and I at once inserted it and proceeded to
drive it tightly home. I had just completed the job to my satisfaction
when I felt the ship lurch heavily. There was a sudden, violent rush
and wash of water, and I sprang to my feet barely in time to see the
boat caught up on the crest of a sea that came sweeping, green and
solid, through the gap in the starboard bulwarks, and carried clear and
clean out through the corresponding gap in the port side! The longboat
had launched herself; and before I could collect my senses, or lift a
hand, I found myself adrift alone, some twenty fathoms to leeward of the
doomed ship, and driving farther away from her every moment.