DANGER ON THE DEEP--A FOREST OF WATERSPOUTS--THE "ARRANDOON" IS
SWAMPED--THE WARNING.
"La la lay lee-ah, lay la le lo-O" So went the song on deck--a song
without words, short, and interrupted at every bar, as the men hauled
cheerily on tack and sheet.
Such a thing would not be allowed for a single moment on board a British
man-o'-war, as the watch singing while they obeyed the orders of the
bo'sun's pipe, taking in sail, squaring yards, or doing any other duty
required of them. And yet, with all due respect for my own flag,
methinks there are times when, as practised in merchant or passenger
ships, that strange, weird, wordless song is not at all an unpleasant
sound to listen to. By night, for instance, after you have turned in to
your little narrow bed--the cradle of the deep, in which you are nightly
rocked--to hear it rising and falling, and ending in long-drawn cadence,
gives one an indescribable feeling of peace and security. Your bark is
all alone--so your thoughts may run--on a wild world of waters. There
may not be another ship within hundreds of miles; the wind may be rising
or the wind may be falling--what do you care? What need you care?
There are watchful eyes on deck, there are good men and true overhead,
and they seem to sing your cradle hymn, "La la lee ah," and before it is
done you are wrapt in that sweetest, that dreamless slumber that
landsmen seldom know.
There was one man at least in every watch on board the _Arrandoon_, who
usually led the song that accompanied the hauling on a rope, with a
sweet, clear tenor voice; you could not have been angry with these men
had you been twenty times a man-o'-war's man.
It was about an hour after breakfast, and our boys were lazing below.
For some time previous to the working song, there had been perfect
silence on board--a silence broken only now and then by a short word of
command, a footstep on deck, or the ominous flapping of the canvas
aloft, as it shivered for a moment, then filled and swelled out again.
Had you been down below, one sign alone would have told you that
something was going to happen--that some change was about to take place.
It was this: when everything is going on all right, you hear the almost
constant tramp, tramp of the officer of the watch up and down the
quarter-deck, but this was absent now, and you would have known without
seeing him that he was standing, probably, by the binnacle, his eyes now
bent aloft, and now sweeping the horizon, and now and then glancing at
the compass.
Then came a word or two of command, given in a quiet, ordinary tone of
voice--there was no occasion to howl on this particular morning. And
after this a rush of feet, and next the song, and the bo'sun's pipe.
Thus:--
_Song_.--"La la lee ah, lay la le lo-O."
_Spoken_.--"Hoy!"
_Boatswain's Pipe_.--"Whee-e, weet weet weet, wee-e."
_Song_.--"La la lee ah, lay la le lo-O."
_Spoken_.--"Belay!"
_Boatswain's Pipe_.--"Wee wee weet weet weet weet, wee-e."
_Spoken_.--"Now lads."
_Song_.--"Lo ah o ee."
_Pipe_.--"Weet weet!"
Then a hurry-scurrying away forward, a trampling of feet enough to
awaken Rip van Winkle, then the bo'sun's pipe _encore_.
Allan straightens his back in his easy-chair--he has been bending over
the table, reading the "Noctes Ambrosianae"--straightens his back,
stretches his arms, and says "Heigho!" Rory is busy arranging some
beautiful transparent specimens of animalculae, not bigger than midges,
on a piece of black cardboard; he had caught them overnight in a gauze
net dragged astern. He doesn't look up. Ralph is lying "tandem" on a
sofa, reading "Ivanhoe." He won't take his eyes off the book, nor move
as much as one drowsy eyelid, but he manages to say,--
"What are they about on deck, Rory?"
"Don't know even a tiny bit," says Rory.
"Rory," continues Ralph, in a slightly louder key; "you're a young man;
run up and see."
"Rory won't then," says Rory, intent on his work; "fag for yourself, my
lazy boy."
"Oh!" says Ralph, "won't you have your ears pulled when I do get up!"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Rory, "you'll have forgotten all about it long before
then."
"Freezing Powders!" roared Ralph.
The bright-faced though bullet-headed nigger boy introduced in last
chapter appeared instantly. He was dressed in white flannel, braided
with blue. Had he been a sprite, or a djin, he couldn't have popped up
with more startling rapidity. Truth is, the young rascal had been
asleep under the table.
"Off on deck with you, Freezing Powders, and see what's up."
Freezing Powders was down again in a moment.
"Take in all sail, sah! and square de yard; no wind, sah! nebber a
puff."
It was just as Freezing Powders said, but there was noise enough
presently, and puffing too, for steam was got up, and the great screw
was churning the waters of the dark northern ocean into creamish foam,
as the vessel went steadily ahead at about ten knots an hour. There was
no occasion to hurry. When Rory and Allan went on deck, they found the
captain in consultation with the mates, Mitchell and Stevenson.
"I must admit," McBain was remarking, "that I can't make it out at all."
"No more can we," said Stevenson with a puzzled smile. "The wind has
failed us all at once, and the sea gone down, and the glass seems to
have taken leave of its senses entirely. It is up one moment high
enough for anything, and down the next to 28 degrees. There, just look
at that sea and look at that sky."
There was certainly something most appalling in the appearance of both.
The ocean was calm and unruffled as glass, with only a long low heave on
it; not a ripple on it big enough to swamp a fly; but over it all a
strange, glassy lustre that--so you would have thought--could have been
skimmed off. The sky was one mass of dark purple-black clouds in
masses. It seemed no distance overhead, and the horizon looked hardly a
mile away on either side. Only in the north it was one unbroken bluish
black, as dark seemingly as night, from the midst of which every now and
then, and every here and there, would come quickly a little puff of
cloud of a lightish grey colour, as if a gun had been fired. Only there
was no sound.
There was something awe-inspiring in the strange, ominous look of sea
and sky, and in the silence broken only by the grind and gride of screw
and engine.
"No," said McBain, "I don't know what we are going to have. Perhaps a
tornado. Anyhow, Mr Stevenson, let us be ready. Get down topgallant
masts, it will be a bit of exercise for the men; let us have all the
steam we can command, and--"
"Batten down, sir?"
"Yes, Mr Stevenson, batten down, and lash the boats inboard."
The good ship _Arrandoon_ was at the time of which I write about fifty
miles south of the Faroes, and a long way to the east. The weather had
been dark and somewhat gloomy, from the very time they lost sight of the
snow-clad hills around Oban, but it now seemed to culminate in a
darkness that could be felt.
The men were well drilled on board this steam yacht. McBain delighted
to have them smart, and it was with surprising celerity that the
topgallant masts were lowered, the hatches battened down, and the good
ship prepared for any emergency. None too soon; the darkness grew more
intense, especially did the clouds look threatening ahead of them. And
now here and there all round them the sea began to get ruffled with
small whirlwinds, that sent the water wheeling round and round like
miniature maelstroms, and raised it up into cones in the centre.
"How is the glass now, Mr Stevenson?" asked McBain.
"Stands very low, sir," was the reply, "but keeps steadily down."
"All right," said McBain; "now get two guns loaded with ball cartridge;
have no more hands on deck than we want. No idlers, d'ye hear?"
"Ay, ay, sir."
"Send Magnus Bolt here."
"Now, Magnus, old man," continued McBain, "d'ye mind the time, some
years ago in the _Snowbird_, when you rid us of that troublesome
pirate?"
"Ay, that I do right well, sir," said this little old weasened specimen
of humanity, rubbing his hands with delight. "It were a fine shot that.
He! he! he! Mercy on us, to see his masts and sails come toppling
down, sir,--he! he! he!"
"Well, I want you again, Magnus; I'd rather trust to your old eye in an
emergency than to any in the ship."
"But where is the foe, sir?"
"Look ahead, Magnus."
Magnus did as he was told; it was a strange, and to one who understood
it, a dreadful sight. Apparently a thousand balloons were afloat in the
blue, murky air, each one trailing its car in the sea, balloons of
terrible size, flat as to their tops, which seemed to join or merge into
one another, forming a black and ominous cloud. The cars that trailed
on the sea were snowy white.
"Heaven help us?" said Magnus, clasping his hands for just a moment,
while his cheeks assumed an ashen hue. "Heaven help us, sir; this is
worse than the pirate."
"They are all coming this way," said McBain; "fire only at those that
threaten us, and fire while they are still some distance ahead."
Meanwhile Ralph had come on deck, and joined his companions. I do not
think that through all the long terrible hour that followed, either of
them spoke one word; although there was no sea on, and for the most part
no motion, they clutched with one hand rigging or shroud, and gazed
terror-struck at the awful scene ahead and around them.
They were soon in the very centre of what appeared an interminable
forest of waterspouts. Few indeed have ever seen such a sight or
encountered so pressing a danger and lived to tell it.
The balloon-shaped heads of these waterspouts looked dark as midnight;
their shafts, I can call them nothing else, were immense pillars rising
out of gigantic feet of seething foam. So close did they pass to some
of these that the yardarms seemed almost to touch them. Our heroes
noticed then, and they marvelled at it afterwards, the strange
monotonous roaring sound they emitted,--a sound that drowned even the
noise of the troubled waters around their shafts.
[Such a phenomenon as this has rarely been witnessed in the Northern
Ocean. It is somewhat strange that on the self-same year this happened,
an earthquake was felt in Ireland, and shocks even near Perth, in
Scotland.]
Old Magnus made good use of his guns on those that threatened the good
ship with destruction; one shot broke always one, and sometimes more,
probably with the vibration; but the thundering sound of the falling
waters, and the turmoil of the sea that followed, what pen can describe?
But, good shot as he is, Magnus is not infallible, else McBain would not
now have to grasp his speaking-trumpet and shout,--
"Stand by, men, stand by."
A waterspout had wholly, or partially at least, broken on board of them.
It was as though the splendid ship had suddenly been blown to atoms by
a terrible explosion, and every timber of her engulfed in the ocean!
For long moments thus, then her crew, half drowned, half dead, could
once more look around. The _Arrandoon_ was afloat, but her decks were
swept. Hundreds of tons of water still filled her decks, and poured out
into the sea in cataracts through her broken bulwarks; ay, and it poured
below too, at the fore and main hatchways, which had been smashed open
with the violence and force of the deluge. The main-yard had come down,
and one whaler was smashed into matchwood. I wish I could say this was
all, but two poor fellows lost for ever the number of their mess. One
was seen floating about dead and unwounded on the deck ere the water got
clear; the other, with sadly splintered brow, was still clutching in a
death-grasp a rope that had bound a tarpaulin over a grating.
But away ahead appeared a long yellowish streak of clear sky, close to
the horizon. The danger had passed.
All hands were now called to clear away the wreck and make good repairs.
The pumps, too, had to be set to work, and as soon as the wind came
down on them from the clear of the horizon, sail was set, for the fires
had been drowned out.
The wind increased to a gale, and there was nothing for it but to lay
to. And so they did all that night and all next day; then the weather
moderated, and the wind coming more easterly they were able to show more
canvas, and to resume their course with something akin to comfort.
The bodies of the two poor fellows who had met with so sad a fate were
committed to the deep--the sailor's grave.
"Earth to earth and dust to dust."
There was more than one moist eye while those words were uttered, for
the men had both been great favourites with their messmates.
Rory was sitting that evening with his elbows resting on the saloon
table, his chin on his hands, and a book in front of him that he was not
looking at, when McBain came below.
"You're quieter than usual," said McBain, placing a kindly hand on his
shoulder.
Rory smiled, forced a laugh even, as one does who wants to shake off an
incubus.
"I was thinking," he said, "of that awful black forest of waterspouts.
I'll never get it out of my head."
"Oh! yes you will, boy Rory," said McBain; "it was a new sensation,
that's all."
"New sensation!" said Allan, laughing in earnest; "well, captain, I must
say that is a mild way of putting it. _I_ don't want any more such
sensations. Steward, bring some nice hot coffee."
"Ay!" cried Ralph, "that's the style, Allan. Some coffee, steward--and,
steward, bring the cold pork and fowls, and make some toast, and bring
the butter and the Chili vinegar."
Poor Irish Rory! Like every one with a poetic temperament, he was
easily cast down, and just as easily raised again. Ralph's wondrous
appetite always amused him.
"Oh, you true Saxon!" said Rory--"you hungry Englishman!" But, ten
minutes afterwards, he felt himself constrained to join the party at the
supper table.
You see, reader mine, a sailor's life is like an April day--sunshine now
and showers anon.
"How now, Stevenson?" said McBain, as the mate entered with a kind of a
puzzled look on his face.
"Well, sir, we are, as you said, off the Faroes. The night is precious
dark, but I can see the lights of a village in here, and the lights of a
vessel of some size, evidently lying at anchor."
"Then, mate," said the captain, "as we don't know exactly where we are,
I don't think we can do wrong to steam in and drop anchor alongside this
craft. We can then board her and find out. How is the weather?"
"A bit thick, sir, and seems inclined to blow a little from the
east-south-east."
"Let it, Stevenson--let it. If the other vessel can ride it out I don't
think the _Arrandoon_ is likely to lose her anchors. Hullo! Mitchell,"
he continued, as the second mate next entered hat in hand, "what's in
the wind now, man?"
"Why, sir," said Mitchell, "I'm all ashore like, you see; I can't make
it out. But here is a boat just been a-hailing of us, and the
passenger--there is only one, a comely lass enough--has just come on
board, and wants to see you at once. Seems a bit cranky. Here she be,
sir;" and Mitchell retired.
A young girl. She was probably not over seventeen, fair-faced, and with
wild blue eyes, and yellow hair, dripping with dew, floating over her
shoulders.
"Stop the ship!" she cried, seizing McBain by the arm. "Go no farther,
or her ribs will be scattered over the waves, and your bones will bleach
on the cliffs of the rocks."
"Poor thing!" muttered McBain. "Oh, you heed me not!" continued the
girl, wringing her hands in despair. "It will be too late--it will be
too late! I tell you here is no harbour, here is no ship. The lights
you see are placed there to lure your vessel on shore. They are
wreckers, I tell you; they will--"
"By the deep three!" sung the man in the chains.
Then there was a shout from the man at the foretop.
"Breakers ahead!"