IN WHICH I SEE THE DAY DAWN UPON A DESERTED OCEAN
I don't claim to possess an atom more courage than the next fellow. I
was heartily scared the instant I realized that the Wavecrest was
adrift and I was fastened into her cabin. But I was not made helpless by
my terror.
I tried my best to open that cabin door; but the big nails had been
driven home. The ports were too small for my body to pass through,
although I did open one and was tempted to shriek for help. But that
would have been a ridiculous thing to do--and useless, as well. Had
anybody heard and understood my need, I was beyond assistance from land,
and there was nobody out in the harbor but myself, I felt sure.
The Wavecrest had got well out into the harbor now. She rolled very
little and therefore I knew that, unguided as she was, her head was
right and wind and tide were sweeping her on. She might be piled up on
either shore at the mouth of the inlet; but from the start I believed
she would be shot through the outlet of the harbor into the open sea.
In the cuddy up forward, with my provisions, there were a saw and
hammer, and other tools. I could no more get at them than I could get
out of the cabin. And although I might be able to do nothing to help
myself or my boat if I was free from my prison, I would have felt a
whole lot safer just then to have been upon her deck!
The door being nailed so fast, and the deck-hatch bolted tight, it was
plain that I would have to smash something in order to get out of the
cabin. Had I had anything to use as a battering ram, I would have begun
on the door. But there seemed nothing to hand that would help me in that
way. I examined the crack where the top of the door and the deck-hatch
came together. Had I something to pry with I might tear the bolts
holding the hatch out of the wood.
Such a thing as a bar was out of the question. But after a few minutes'
cogitation, I remembered that my bunks on either side of the cabin could
be turned up against the bulkhead, and at each end of the bunks was a
flat piece of steel fifteen or eighteen inches long which held the
berth-bench when it was let down. Two screws at each end held these
steel straps in place.
I had no screw driver; but I had the knife that I had taken away from my
cousin when he attacked me the evening before. I thrust the point of its
heavy blade into a crack and snapped the steel square off. It made a
fairly usable screw-driver, and I quickly had one of the steel straps
out of its fastenings.
The piece of steel was stiff and made as good a bar for prying as I
could have found. With some difficulty I thrust one end up between the
top of the cabin door and the edge of the hatch, close to one side. I
slipped the closed knife up between the bar and the door for a block
against which to prize, caught the end of the bar with both hands, and
threw all my force against it. The hatch squeaked; there was a
splintering sound of wood. I was badly marring the top of the door, but
the bolt which held the hatch at that side was giving.
I repeated the process at the other side of the hatch, and gradually, by
working first at one side, and then the other, I splintered the woodwork
around the bolts, and bent the bolts themselves, so that the hatch
began to shove back. As soon as possible I shoved it back far enough for
my body to pass through the aperture.
The rain beat down upon my face as I worked my way out of the cabin in
my oilskins; I left my hat behind. The Wavecrest was pitching and
yawing pretty badly now and before I cast a single glance around I was
sure that she was already going through the inlet.
Yes! there was the beacon at the extreme point of Bolderhead Neck--it
was just abreast of me as I stood at last upon the sloop's unsteady
deck. I leaped down into the cockpit and quickly lowered the
centerboard. Almost at once the Wavecrest began to ride more evenly. I
could see little but the beacon, the night was so black; but I ran to
the tiller and found that the sloop was under good steerage way and
answered her helm nicely.
Like all sloops, the Wavecrest was very broad of beam for her depth of
keel, and the standing-room, or cockpit, was roomy. She was well rigged,
too, having a staysail and gafftopsail. Really, to sail her properly
there should have been a crew of two aboard; but under the present
circumstances I felt that one person aboard the Wavecrest was one too
many! With a rising gale behind her the craft was being driven to sea at
express speed, and it was utterly impossible to retard her course.
For an hour I sat there in the driving rain, hatless and shivering,
hanging to the tiller and letting the sloop drive. Letting her drive!
why, there wasn't a thing I could do to change her course. She was
rushing on through the foaming seas like a projectile shot from some
huge gun, and every moment the howling wind seemed to increase!
The beacon on the Neck was behind me now. There was nothing ahead of the
sloop's fixed bowsprit. We were driving into a curtain of blackness that
had been let down from the sky to the sea. It is seldom that there is
not some little light playing over the surface of the water. This night
a palpable cloud had settled upon the face of the waters and I could not
even see the foam on the crests of the waves, save where they ran past
the sloop's freeboard.
I had left the broken slide open, however, and the rain was beating down
into the cabin. This began to worry me and finally I lashed the
tiller--fastening it in the bights of two ropes prepared for that
purpose, and crept back into the cabin again. It was little use to
remain outside, save that if the sloop was flung upon a rock, I might
have a little better chance to escape.
At the speed she was traveling, however, I knew very well that we were
already beyond the reefs and little islets that mask the entrance to
Bolderhead Harbor. It was a veritable hurricane behind us. The wind was
actually blowing so hard that the waves were scarcely of medium height.
I had seen a mere afternoon squall kick up a heavier sea.
It was awkward getting in and out of the cabin by way of the hatch; but
I did not take the time then to open the door. I fixed the hatch so that
it would slide back and forth properly, however. Then I lit my spirit
lamp and made some coffee. I was pretty well chilled through, for the
rain and wind seemed to penetrate to the very marrow of my bones.
I was sure that this was the beginning of the equinoctial gale. It might
be a week before the storm would break. And where would the Wavecrest
be in a week's time?
Not that I really believed the sloop would hold together, or still be on
top of the sea, when this gale blew itself out. She was a mere speck on
the agitated surface of the sea. My only hope then was that I might be
rescued by some larger vessel--and how I should get from the Wavecrest
craft to another was beyond the power of my imaginings.
I could not be content to remain below--nor was that unnatural. Aside
from the fear I had of the sloop's yawing and possibly turning turtle,
and so imprisoning me in the cabin with no hope of escape therefrom, I
felt that I should be more on the alert to seize any opportunity for
escape were I at the tiller. So I carried a Mexican poncho which I wound
to the stern, draped it about me over the oilskins, and with the
sou'wester tied under my chin I could defy the rain, nor did the keen
wind search my vitals.
But thus bundled up I would have stood little show had the sloop
capsized. Afterward I realized that I might as well have remained in the
cabin.
However, to sleep in either place, was impossible. Sometimes the rain
beat down upon the decked over portion of the boat with the sound of a
drumstick beaten upon taut calfskin. Again the wind blew in such sharp
gusts that the rain seemed to be swept over the face of the sea and
then, if I chanced to glance over my shoulder, the drops stung like
hail.
Altogether I have never passed a more uncomfortable night--perhaps never
one during which I was in greater peril. The wind was shifting bit by
bit, too. My compass told me that the Wavecrest was now being driven
straight out to sea, instead of running parallel with the Massachusetts
coast as had been at first the fact.
How fast I was traveling I could not guess. There was a patent log
aboard; but I did not rig it. Indeed, it was much safer to remain in the
stern of the sloop than to move about at all. I knew we were traveling
much faster than I had ever traveled by water before and I had something
beside the speed of my involuntary voyage to think about.
It had not crossed my mind at the time, but when I had slipped out to
the Wavecrest that evening, giving my mother and the servants the
impression that I had gone to my room as usual, I had done a very
foolish--if not wrong--thing. The sloop might not be the only craft in
Bolderhead Harbor to break away from moorings and go on an involuntary
cruise. Other wandering craft might not escape the rocks about the
beach, as the Wavecrest had. It might be supposed that my sloop was
among the wreckage that would be cast ashore along our rocky coast, and
my absence might not be connected with the disappearance of the sloop.
My mother and friends would not suspect the reason or cause for my
absence. If I had taken a soul into my confidence, in the morning my
mother would be informed immediately of my accident. Perhaps, after all,
it was not a bad thing that some uncertainty must of necessity attach
itself to my disappearance.
For although I had every reason to believe that Paul Downes had either
nailed me into the cabin, or caused me to be nailed in, well knowing
that I had gone aboard the sloop to sleep, I was equally confident that
he would not tell of what he had done, or allow his companions to tell
of the trick, either.
These, and similar hazy thoughts regarding my condition, shuttled back
and forth through my brain during the long and anxious hours of that
never-to-be-forgotten night. Sometimes, I presume, I lost myself and
slept for a few minutes; but the hours dragged on so dismally, and I was
so uncomfortable and anxious, that I am sure I could not have slept
much of the time. And it did seem as though the east would never lighten
for dawn.
At last it came, however; and then I liked the prospect less than the no
prospect of the black night! All that it revealed to my aching eyes was
a vast, vast expanse of empty, heaving drab sea, across which the gale
hurried sheets of cold and biting rain--not a sign of land behind
me--not a sail against the equally drab horizon. My sloop, under her
bare, writhing pole, was scudding across this deserted ocean with no
haven in sight and I was without hope of rescue.