The Sea-Story Megapack

by Jack Williamson

  “There goes his ensign, union down,” he exclaimed; “he’s in trouble. We’ll show ours.”

  From a flag-locker inside the companionway he drew out the Stars and Stripes, which he ran up to the monkey-gaff. Then he looked again.

  “Down goes his ensign; up goes the code pennant. He wants to signal. Come up here, boys,” called Poop-deck; “give me a hand.”

  As the six men climbed the steps, he pulled out the corresponding code signal from the locker, and ran it up on the other part of the halyards as the ensign fluttered down. “Go down, one of you,” he said, “and get the signal-book and shipping-list. He’ll show his number next. Get ours ready—R. L. F. T.”

  While a man sprang below for the books named, the others hooked together the signal-flags forming the ship’s number, and Poop-deck resumed the glasses.

  “Q. T. F. N.,” he exclaimed. “Look it up.”

  The books had arrived, and while one lowered and hoisted again the code signal, which was also the answering pennant, the others pored over the shipping-list.

  “Steamer Aldebaran of New York,” they said.

  The pennant came down, and the ship’s number went up to the gaff.

  “H. V.,” called Poop-deck, as he scanned two flags now flying from the steamer’s truck. “What does that say?”

  “Damaged rudder—cannot steer,” they answered.

  “Pull down the number and show the answering pennant again,” said Poop-deck; “and let me see that signal-book.” He turned the leaves, studied a page for a moment, then said: “Run up H. V. R. That says, ‘What do you want?’ and that’s the nearest thing to it.”

  These flags took the place of the answering pennant at the gaff-end, and again Poop-deck watched through the glasses, noting first the showing of the steamer’s answering pennant, then the letters K. R. N.

  “What does K. R. N. say?” he asked.

  They turned the leaves, and answered: “I can tow you.”

  “Tow us? We’re all right; we don’t want a tow. He’s crazy. How can he tow us when he can’t steer?” exclaimed three or four together.

  “He wants to tow us so that he can steer, you blasted fools,” said Poop-deck. “He can keep head to sea and go where he likes with a big drag on his stern.”

  “That’s so. Where’s he bound—‘you that has knowledge and eddication’?”

  “Didn’t say; but he’s bound for the Diamond Shoals, and he’ll fetch up in three hours, if we can’t help him. He’s close in.”

  “Towline’s down the forepeak,” said a man. “Couldn’t get it up in an hour,” said another. “Yes, we can,” said a third. Then, all speaking at once, and each raising his voice to its limit, they argued excitedly: “Can’t be done.” “Coil it on the forecastle.” “Yes, we can.” “Too much sea.” “Run down to wind’ard.” “Line ’ud part, anyhow.” “Float a barrel.” “Shut up.” “I tell you, we can.” “Call the watch.” “Seldom, yer daft.” “Needn’t get a boat over.” “Hell ye can.” “Call the boys.” “All hands with heavin’-lines.” “Can’t back a topsail in this.” “Go lay down.” “Soak yer head, Seldom.” “Hush.” “Shut up.” “Nothing you can’t do.” “Go to the devil.” “I tell you, we can; do as I say, and we’ll get a line to him, or get his.”

  The affirmative speaker, who had also uttered the last declaration, was Seldom Helward. “Put me in command,” he yelled excitedly, “and do what I tell you, and we’ll make fast to him.”

  “No captains here,” growled one, while the rest eyed Seldom reprovingly.

  “Well, there ought to be; you’re all rattled, and don’t know any more than to let thousands o’ dollars slip past you. There’s salvage down to looward.”

  “Salvage?”

  “Yes, salvage. Big boat—full o’ passengers and valuable cargo—shoals to looward of him—can’t steer. You poor fools, what ails you?”

  “Foller Seldom,” vociferated the little man at the wheel; “foller Seldom, and ye’ll wear stripes.”

  “Dry up, Sinful. Call the watch. It’s near seven bells, anyhow. Let’s hear what the rest say. Strike the bell.”

  The uproarious howl with which sailors call the watch below was delivered down the cabin stairs, and soon eight other men came up, rubbing their eyes and grumbling at the premature wakening, while another man came out of the forecastle and joined the two pacing the forward deck. Seldom Helward’s proposition was discussed noisily in joint session on the poop, and finally accepted.

  “We put you in charge, Seldom, against the rule,” said Bigpig Monahan, sternly, “’cause we think you’ve some good scheme in your head; but if you haven’t—if you make a mess of things just to have a little fun bossin’ us—you’ll hear from us. Go ahead, now. You’re captain.”

  Seldom climbed to the top of the afterhouse, looked to windward, then to leeward at the rolling steamer, and called out:

  “I want more beef at the wheel. Bigpig, take it; and you, Turkey, stand by with him. Get away from there, Sinful. Give her the upper maintopsail, the rest of you. Poop-deck, you stand by the signal-halyards. Ask him if he’s got a towline ready.”

  Protesting angrily at the slight put upon him, Sinful Peck relinquished the wheel, and joined the rest on the main-deck, where they had hurried. Two men went aloft to loose the topsail, and the rest cleared away gear, while Poop-deck examined the signal-book.

  “K. S. G. says, ‘Have a towline ready.’ That ought to do, Seldom,” he called.

  “Run it up,” ordered the newly installed captain, “and watch his answer.” Up went the signal, and as the men on the main-deck were manning the topsail-halyards, Poop-deck made out the answer: “V. K. C.”

  “That means ‘All right,’ Seldom,” he said, after inspecting the book.

  “Good enough; but we’ll get our line ready, too. Get down and help ’em masthead the yard first, then take ’em forrard and coil the towline abaft the windlass. Get all the heavin’-lines ready, too.”

  Poop-deck obeyed; and while the maintopsail-yard slowly arose to place under the efforts of the rest, Seldom himself ran up the answering pennant, and then the repetition of the steamer’s last message: “All right.” This was the final signal displayed between the two craft. Both signal-flags were lowered, and for a half-hour Seldom waited, until the others had lifted a nine-inch hawser from the forepeak and coiled it down. Then came his next orders in a continuous roar:

  “Three hands aft to the spanker-sheet! Stand by to slack off and haul in! Man the braces for wearing ship, the rest o’ you! Hard up the wheel! Check in port main and starboard cro’-jack braces! Shiver the topsail! Slack off that spanker!”

  Before he had finished the men had reached their posts. The orders were obeyed. The ship paid off, staggered a little in the trough under the right-angle pressure of the gale, swung still farther, and steadied down to a long, rolling motion, dead before the wind, heading for the steamer. Yards were squared in, the spanker hauled aft, staysail trimmed to port, and all hands waited while the ship charged down the two miles of intervening sea.

  “Handles like a yacht,” muttered Seldom, as, with brow wrinkled and keen eye flashing above his hooked nose, he conned the steering from his place near the mizzenmast.

  Three men separated themselves from the rest and came aft. They were those who had walked the forward deck. One was tall, broad-shouldered, and smooth-shaven, with a palpable limp; another, short, broad, and hairy, showed a lamentable absence of front teeth; and the third, a blue-eyed man, slight and graceful of movement, carried his arm in splints and sling. This last was in the van as they climbed the poop steps.

  “I wish to protest,” he said. “I am captain of this ship under the law. I protest against this insanity. No boat can live in this sea. No help can be given that steamer.”

  “And I bear witness to the protest,” said the tall man. The short, hairy man might have spoken also, but had no time.

  “Get off the poop,” yelled Seldom. “Go forrard, where you b
elong.” He stood close to the bucket-rack around the skylight. Seizing bucket after bucket, he launched them at his visitors, with the result that the big man was tumbled down the poop steps head first, while the other two followed, right side up, but hurriedly, and bearing some sore spots. Then the rest of the men set upon them, much as a pack of dogs would worry strange cats, and kicked and buffeted them forward.

  There was no time for much amusement of this sort. Yards were braced to port, for the ship was careering down toward the steamer at a ten-knot rate; and soon black dots on her rail resolved into passengers waving hats and handkerchiefs, and black dots on the boat deck resolved into sailors standing by the end of a hawser which led up from the bitts below on the fantail. And the ship came down, until it might have seemed that Seldom’s intention was to ram her. But not so; when a scant two lengths separated the two craft, he called out: “Hard down! Light up the staysail-sheet and stand by the forebraces!”

  Around the ship came on the crest of a sea; she sank into the hollow behind, shipped a few dozen tons of water from the next comber, and then lay fairly steady, with her bow meeting the seas, and the huge steamer not a half-length away on the lee quarter. The foretopmast-staysail was flattened, and Seldom closely scrutinized the drift and heave of the ship.

  “How’s your wheel, Bigpig?” he asked.

  “Hard down.”

  “Put it up a little; keep her in the trough.”

  He noted the effect on the ship of this change; then, as though satisfied, roared out: “Let your forebraces hang, forrard there! Stand by heavin’-lines fore and aft! Stand by to go ahead with that steamer when we have your line!” The last injunction, delivered through his hands, went down the wind like a thunderclap, and the officers on the steamer’s bridge, vainly trying to make themselves heard against the gale in the same manner, started perceptibly at the impact of sound, and one went to the engine-room speaking-tube.

  Breast to breast the two vessels lifted and fell. At times it seemed that the ship was to be dropped bodily on the deck of the steamer; at others, her crew looked up a streaked slope of a hundred feet to where the other craft was poised at the crest. Then the steamer would drop, and the next sea would heave the ship toward her. But it was noticeable that every bound brought her nearer to the steamer, and also farther ahead, for her sails were doing their work.

  “Kick ahead on board the steamer!” thundered Seldom from his eminence. “Go ahead! Start the wagon, or say your prayers, you blasted idiots!”

  The engines were already turning; but it takes time to overcome three thousand tons of inertia, and before the steamer had forged ahead six feet the ship had lifted above her, and descended her black side with a grinding crash of wood against iron. Fore and main channels on the ship were carried away, leaving all lee rigging slack and useless; lower braces caught in the steamer’s davit-cleats and snapped, but the sails, held by the weather braces, remained full, and the yards did not swing. The two craft separated with a roll and came together again with more scraping and snapping of rigging. Passengers left the rail, dived indoors, and took refuge on the opposite side, where falling blocks and small spars might not reach them. Another leap toward the steamer resulted in the ship’s maintopgallantmast falling in a zigzag whirl, as the snapping gear aloft impeded it; and dropping athwart the steamer’s funnel, it neatly sent the royalyard with sail attached down the iron cylinder, where it soon blazed and helped the artificial draft in the stoke-hold. Next came the foretopgallantmast, which smashed a couple of boats. Then, as the round black stern of the steamer scraped the lee bow of the ship, jib-guys parted, and the jib-boom itself went, snapping at the bowsprit-cap, with the last bite the ship made at the steamer she was helping. But all through this riot of destruction—while passengers screamed and prayed, while officers on the steamer shouted and swore, and Seldom Helward, bellowing insanely, danced up and down on the ship’s house, and the hail of wood and iron from aloft threatened their heads—men were passing the towline.

  It was a seven-inch steel hawser with a Manila tail, which they had taken to the foretopsail-sheet bitts before the jib-boom had gone. Panting from their exertions, they watched it lift from the water as the steamer ahead paid out with a taut strain; then, though the crippled spars were in danger of falling and really needed their first attention, they ignored the fact and hurried aft, as one man, to attend to Seldom.

  Encouraged by the objurgations of Bigpig and his assistant, who were steering now after the steamer, they called their late commander down from the house and deposed him in a concert of profane ridicule and abuse, to which he replied in kind. He was struck in the face by the small fist of Sinful Peck, and immediately knocked the little man down. Then he was knocked down himself by a larger fist, and, fighting bravely and viciously, became the object of fist-blows and kicks, until, in one of his whirling staggers along the deck, he passed close to the short, broad, hairy man, who yielded to the excitement of the moment and added a blow to Seldom’s punishment. It was an unfortunate mistake; for he took Seldom’s place, and the rain of fists and boots descended on him until he fell unconscious. Mr. Helward himself delivered the last quieting blow, and then stood over him with a lurid grin on his bleeding face.

  “Got to put down mutiny though the heavens fall,” he said painfully.

  “Right you are, Seldom,” answered one. “Here, Jackson, Benson—drag him forrard; and, Seldom,” he added, reprovingly, “don’t you ever try it again. Want to be captain, hey? You can’t; you don’t know enough. You couldn’t command my wheelbarrow. Here’s three days’ work to clear up the muss you’ve made.”

  But in this they spoke more, and less, than the truth. The steamer, going slowly, and steering with a bridle from the towline to each quarter, kept the ship’s canvas full until her crew had steadied the yards and furled it. They would then have rigged preventer-stays and shrouds on their shaky spars, had there been time; but there was not. An uncanny appearance of the sea to leeward indicated too close proximity to the shoals, while a blackening of the sky to windward told of probable increase of wind and sea. And the steamer waited no longer. With a preliminary blast of her whistle, she hung the weight of the ship on the starboard bridle, gave power to her engines, and rounded to, very slowly, head to sea, while the men on the ship, who had been carrying the end of the coiled hawser up the foretopmast rigging, dropped it and came down hurriedly.

  Released from the wind-pressure on her strong side, which had somewhat steadied her, the ship now rolled more than she had done in the trough, and with every starboard roll were ominous creakings and grindings aloft. At last came a heavier lurch, and both crippled topmasts fell, taking with them the mizzentopgallantmast. Luckily, no one was hurt, and they disgustedly cut the wreck adrift, stayed the fore-and mainmasts with the hawser, and resigning themselves to a large subtraction from their salvage, went to a late breakfast—a savory meal of smoking fried ham and potatoes, hot cakes and coffee served to sixteen in the cabin, and an unsavory meal of “hardtack-hash,” with an infusion of burnt bread-crust, pease, beans, and leather, handed, but not served, to three in the forecastle.

  Three days later, with Sandy Hook lighthouse showing through the haze ahead, and nothing left of the gale but a rolling ground-swell, the steamer slowed down so that a pilot-boat’s dinghy could put a man aboard each craft. And the one who climbed the ship’s side was the pilot that had taken her to sea, outward bound, and sympathized with her crew. They surrounded him on the poop and asked for news, while the three men forward looked aft hungrily, as though they would have joined the meeting, but dared not. Instead of giving news, the pilot asked questions, which they answered.

  “I knew you’d taken charge, boys,” he said at length. “The whole world knows it, and every man-of-war on the Pacific stations has been looking for you. But they’re only looking out there. What brings you round here, dismasted, towing into New York?”

  “That’s where the ship’s bound—New York. We took her out; we brin
g her home. We don’t want her—don’t belong to us. We’re law-abidin’ men.”

  “Law-abiding men?” asked the amazed pilot.

  “You bet. We’re goin’ to prosecute those dogs of ours forrard there to the last limit o’ the law. We’ll show ’em they can’t starve and hammer and shoot free-born Americans just ’cause they’ve got guns in their pockets.”

  The pilot looked forward, nodded to one of the three, who beckoned to him, and asked:

  “Who’d you elect captain?”

  “Nobody,” they roared. “We had enough o’ captains. This ship’s an unlimited democracy—everybody just as good as the next man; that is, all but the dogs. They sleep on the bunk-boards, do as they’re told, and eat salt mule and dunderfunk—same as we did goin’ out.”

  “Did they navigate for you? Did no one have charge of things?”

  “Poop-deck picked up navigation, and we let him off steerin’ and standin’ lookout. Then Seldom, here, he wanted to be captain just once, and we let him—well, look at our spars.”

  “Poop-deck? Which is Poop-deck? Do you mean to say,” asked the pilot when the navigator had been indicated to him, “that you brought this ship home on picked-up navigation?”

  “Didn’t know anything about it when we left Callao,” answered the sailor, modestly. “The steward knew enough to wind the chronometer until I learned how. We made an offing and steered due south, while I studied the books and charts. It didn’t take me long to learn how to take the sun. Then we blundered round the Horn somehow, and before long I could take chronometer sights for the longitude. Of course I know we went out in four months and used up five to get back; but a man can’t learn the whole thing in one passage. We lost some time, too, chasing other ships and buying stores; the cabin grub gave out.”

  “You bought, I suppose, with Captain Benson’s money.”

  “S’pose it was his. We found it in his desk. But we’ve kept account of every cent expended, and bought no grub too good for a white man to eat.”