The mate had been heading across to the opposite shore, like most of them, bad sailing tactics, as it would put us away to leeward at the last signal.
Accordingly, to steal the best berth, I luffed her up, and started to hold as close as possible to the weather shore. Behind me, the mate was anxiously calling out the time :
“Four minutes to go.”
“Three minutes !”
“Two minutes !”
The Dundee, at the two-minute call, was pressing us close, both fighting for the weather berth.
Suddenly the Alcala bore away and gybed. Dundee did the same, with a fearful swing, almost in her own length.
We spring up to the wind, close-hauled on the port tack, and meet Dundee close-hauled on the starboard.
In sudden excitement, I started to cross Dundee, when Uncle Jock called:
“Ye can’t do that.”
I could not be quite sure that Alcala to leeward would give us room to bear away under Dundee’s stern. It was for me a baffling situation ; at the wheel of a racing schooner, closing in upon the line, is a moment for lightning decisions.
“Hard a-lee,” shouted our Captain.
Instinctively my hand obeyed, and we rattled up into the wind’s eye, the headsheets flapping like fury, and swung round on to the other tack.
Before I had time for breathing space, Cap’n Jock called:
“Hard up, and gybe her.”
“Get your headsheets in, give her a foot of mainsheet.”
Over came the great mainboom with a crash.
Now it was seen that all three schooners were heading straight for the line, Alcala first, Dundee, not quite overlapping her, second, and rather under Alcala’s quarter, then ourselves third, half a length astern of Dundee. The other three were fighting it out down to leeward, out of our ken. It was enough for me that I was in the leading trio, fighting tooth and nail for first place.
“One minute to go,” sang out the mate.
Everything seemed frightfully disorganized on our decks, from sudden tack and gybe.
In that crisis, I felt a bit panicky, my hand trembling on the wheel, but one glimpse of Cap’n Jock was reassuring; from the look of him, he might have been tied up to the wharf, instead of fighting tooth and nail for the lead.
Still leaning on the companion, he drawled:
“Jibtop’sl.”
At this, our crowd broke out the baby which had been set in stops.
A puff hit the Airlie, and she heeled sharply to the breeze, while white water came boiling up along her scuppers.
The vessels ahead of us were too soon, and had to luff. Both shivered in the wind, and we could hear their headsails rattling like musketry.
In this moment, we drew up fast on the others, overlapping them several lengths to leeward. They put their helms hard up, and all of us now filled for the line.
The Dundee’s bowsprit appeared to me to be just up to the markboat.
“They’re over I” someone yelled.
“So are we,” remarked the Skipper in laconic manner.
At this startling intelligence, my breath suddenly seemed to come back again, while my heart which had stood still for that last agonizing minute, picked up its beat.
“Are we all right?”
“Sure, we’re all right. Let her rip.”
With this, the Skipper cast a canny eye along the canvas, then called:
“In mainsheet a little. Ain’t quite got the weight yet.”
Wonderful as it might appear, after five minutes of tacking, gybing, and jockeying, three of our ninety-ton toothpicks had crossed the line beam and beam.
The sun shone through a vast expanse of cotton in the Dundee’s spread, as I saw it towering above us over our weather rail. Seething spindrift shrouded us to leeward. And now, with sheets trimmed, the racket of the start was over.
The great ocean race had begun.
CHAPTER XX
Open Ocean
One hour after the starting whistle, Dundee led the way out of the straits, Airlie pressing close astern, Alcala having fallen back to third.
With a thirty-knot blow, and the gale rising, it was evident that we were in for no light affray. As we laid over to it yet more steeply, one could see the hint of satisfaction playing across the tight-pressed lips of Cap’n Jock.
His was a rough weather boat built to stand the hardest kind of driving and heavy seas.
The Dundee was more of a racing model, for ghosting in light airs. But for all that, the man who started to cross tacks with Black Dan on a weather berth had to be all there.
Jock now set himself to the task in earnest. Twice he shifted his trim, as his vessel seemed dead by the head.
For over an hour, the Dundee held the Airlie under her lee, as we went ramping across the comparative protection of Chedabucto Bay. At first, we seemed to have nothing to show, in spite of our best efforts, and then, with the wind increasing, our vessel began to forge ahead, riding fairly dry, while the other leaned steeply and scooped the seas over her bow, until she looked more like a half-tide rock than a racing schooner.
As we approached Canso, with the vessels closing in on each other, the Airlie took a position just on the lee quarter of her rival.
“That’s bad,” muttered the mate.
But Cap’n Jock knew his two-sticker better than any of his crew, and there followed as beautiful a bit of seamanship as one could desire. Watching his every move, I saw Jock luff closer up for an instant, till he had the Dundee over his bowsprit, and not a cable’s length ahead.
We could see Black Dan brushing the spray from his eyes, at which Jock set his thin-pressed lips, while the look of resolution flashed into his steel-blue eyes. But try as he might, he could not gain an inch to weather.
Giving the Airlie a good full, we fell off so that we headed just to leeward of the end of our rival’s boom. The added full gave the old girl a jump, and she ran up under the Dundee’s boom, so close that she seemed to hang from her counter.
Our gang set their teeth, while the Campbells yelled back: “We’ll smash ye!”
It was touch and go, but, with sudden delight, I saw that the Airlie had begun to eat through her rival’s lee, crawling inch by inch up to her mainmast, then on to her foremast. Here she hung again and seemed to listen, while the air cracked with Campbell oaths.
All the time, the two schooners were tearing through the crested seas at fifteen knots, with everything going blue. It was indeed a sailing moment of divinest daring.
In the crisis, just as Cap’n Jock expected of her, the Airlie began surely and unmistakably to crawl ahead, until we got the full air in front of the Dundee’s jib, where we jumped forward with a bound.
We had worked through our rival’s lee, giving him momentarily a fine drubbing. But there was no respite.
With the prospects darkening, Cap’n Jock lost no time in preparing for bad weather.
The dories, nested in the waist, were turned bottom up, and made doubly secure, extra lashings were put on spare spars and gear.
At six o’clock that evening, two hours from MacNairs, we raised Cranberry Light. By this time, prospects were looking wilder than ever, and a still more ominous sign, the glass had begun to fall.
With a living gale oif shore, Jock respected the warnings enough to order:
“Put the tops’ls in gaskets, and stow away the stays’!.”
Just before reaching Cranberry Island, all hands were ordered to put a reef in the great mainsail. When it was remarked that Black Dan was carrying everything, Jock snorted:
“I can carry me summer kites as long as any, but I ken when to ha’ a care.”
We set our course on the inside of Cranberry Island, tearing through the shipping of Canso- Harbor, which is o
pen at both ends.
For the brief calm in the lee of the harbor, there came a breathing space, while we tussled with reef points of the slatting mainsail.
Then, around by Glasgow Head, we struck the full force of the open. The gale from the northeast bucking into the current was kicking up a tideway sea that was monstrous. Down, down, went the careening schooner, with the weight of the wind and the pressure of the seas.
“Here comes the Atlantic,” yelled Allan MacEacheren, taking his place beside the Skipper at the wheel. Tugging with might and main, the pair of them suddenly found themselves in mortal combat with the ocean.
Through the shoal water just off of Glasgow Head, with the lead going, we raced hell-for- leather, while the crew of a coaster, beating in, looked askance at our great white schooner outbound into the smother of the howling night.
CHAPTER XXI
Running Before A Gale
The next watch for duty were just about to get “oiled up,” when a voice from the deck shouted down the companion:
“Hi, there below! Shake a leg! Here’s ice close aboard!”
Tearing along under reefed mainsail, whole foresail, and jib, all the sail we could carry, it needed no second alarm to give the old-timers a realization of imminent peril.
Not knowing as well as the rest what this alarm implied, I was still hanging on for an extra wink, when Louis shook me vigorously, exclaiming:
“Get out o’ here, quick.”
“What’s up?”
“Hell’s up. Goin’ the way we are now, if we crack into any o’ that floatin’ ice, our bows will be crushed like eggshell.”
Without waiting for any further warning, I leaped out of my bunk, and raced up on deck, barefooted and in my shirt sleeves.
As soon as I emerged from the companion, Cap’n Jock espied me and sang out:
“Ye’ve got the best eyes aboard, Johnnie Angus, so hop up on to the fore there, and tell us what’s ahead.”
Rushing for’ard, I jumped into the rigging, and raced aloft until far enough up to get a wide view.
Fortunately, it was bright moonlight, and there, before us, stretched out an apparently interminable field of ice, through which we were driving at a terrific rate.
“Luff !”
“Bear away!”
“Luff, again! Luff!”
Successively, I shouted directions to the wheel, while at times I found myself tensed against the ratlins, waiting for what seemed certain doom.
Hundreds of isolated cakes appeared out before. Their menace was enough to turn the hair gray. We were no sooner clear of one of these floaters, than another threatened.
Realizing the magnitude of the danger, Cap’n Jock sang out:
“Take in the fores’l,” an order which none were loth to obey. Indeed, the crew would gladly have taken in every stitch of canvas, but on account of the amazing transformation which the race had wrought in our Skipper, all thought of caution seemed to have gone out of him. Our erstwhile Meekey Moses was now flinging defiance into the very face of Death.
In spite of the doused fores’I, we still made our way at a terrific rate through the maze of floating ice pans. Louis, who climbed up on the fore rigging to keep me company, allowed that, “Any one o’ them sugar loaves would be enough to send us to bloody blazes.”
Aft, someone suggested that we were still sporting too much canvas, but it was heartbreaking to Jock to have to forego even his foresail.
“Hold her as she is,” he bellowed.
For over an hour, I clung there in the bitter cold, directing the Captain how to steer.
With the gale sweeping down from the vast body of pack ice that lay to windward, the air was keen and biting, so that my teeth chattered, and in my thinly clad condition, I had reason to regret my preparations.
“If you get called after this,” admonished Louis, “don’t waste no minute on extra snooze, but take that time gettin’ wrapped up warm, and remember they don’t call ye aboard a Banker unless ye’re needed.”
When at last we dashed out into open water, with vast relief, I shouted:
“All clear, ahead.”
“Sure there ain’t na stray floes in sight?”
“All clear.”
“All right, then, down ye come.”
Throwing my feet into the backstay, I descended at lightning speed. As my feet smacked upon the deck, the Skipper called :
“Now, then, up wi’ that fores’l.”
Glad for a chance to warm up my numbed limbs, I leaped for the halliards. The others, however, hung back reluctantly. Murdie Chis- holm, conspicuous for his timidity, sobbed half- aloud:
“This’ll be the death o’ us yet!”
But Cap’n Jock was in no mood for a hanger- back.
“What’s the matter wi’ ye lads there on the end of that halliard?”
A low buzz of muttering objections began to arise, which in turn was cut short by the whiplash voice of the commander:
“None o’ that.”
Mutterings ceased, but several still appeared half-hearted.
“Come on, come on! Put some snap in it!”
There was an irresistible urge in our Skipper’s word of command, and soon again the Airlie was staggering under an incredible press of canvas.
Finally, there came the cry, “Belay,” and with sheets well off, we went rushing through
the darkness like some great black-winged specter.
As if this were not enough for a driving gale, the Skipper, who had grown apprehensive from the time lost in the ice field, called:
“Get the stays! out, an’ bend it on her.”
As though in protest to this order, there came a sharp whine and shriek from overdriven topmasts.
“Somethin’ goin’ to happen, Skipper, if ye keep on chancin’ it like this,” wailed Murdie Chisholm.
For answer, the Skipper merely spat to leeward, with contempt.
CHAPTER XXII
Cap’n Jock Comes To His Own
With the racing fever awakening in his blood, Foul Weather Jock had suddenly emerged. Again and again, I found myself gazing in his direction with doubting eyes.
The master on this course of headlong chancing was vastly different from the pussy-footing person that had been sneered at by the Campbells as a “Whipper-in.”
Surely this firebrand upon our poop could be in nowise related to that gray wisp of a man whose every attitude ashore spelled caution and decorum.
At his audacious orders, I almost pinched myself for fear that I had not heard aright. Some of the crew began to think that the old man had gone daft.
“We’ll all be in Fiddler’s Green, yet.”
“This is too much!”
Such ejaculations were cut short by the Skipper blazing forth:
“Git that stays’l up, I tell ye.”
Cap’n Jock was a man driver as well as a ship driver, and no one, not even Wild Archie, dared flaunt him now.
“Break yer backs on them halliards till she’s flat as a board.”
Over and over went the lee rail until the yicious plungings nigh stopped the heart beat.
“He’ll crack the sticks clean out o’ her,” wailed Murdie Chisholm, this time not alone in his blind panic.
“Ice just behind, an’ perhaps more ice before. If we strike goin’ like this we’ll vanish as if the finger o’ God has touched us.”
Any one of the crew would gladly have cut the halliards, but the wrath of Jock MacPhee in that wild moment was more dreaded than the wrath of the sea.
Fingers ached to ease the sheets, but not a man dared move against the Skipper’s word.
While all hands were still on deck, Jock addressed them from the wheel. On account of the passion that possesse
d him, his colorless expressions gave way to pungent, lurid speech.
“Now, then, ye lads frae below what got caught nappin’, get into yer oilskins and stay in ‘em till we’re clubbed down to our ridin’ hawser. Dinna forget this here hooker’s fight- in’ sudden death, an’ that means every mother’s son aboard is fightin’, too. Watch on, or watch off, keep oiled up, ready to jump fer yer lives at the first call. Those on deck stand by every minute to tend sheets, for we’ll be on our berth on the Western Ground in ten hours, or we’ll be with Davy Jones.”
Once Allan MacEacheren had the temerity to suggest that the staysail was too much, at which the Skipper jerked out:
“That stays’l’s up, an’ no one’ll haul it in unless it’s ripped off wi’ the hand o’ God’l- mighty.”
Such wild driving meant ceaseless vigilance on the part of the crew. To walk up and down the decks was out of question. It was necessary for the watch about their duties to haul themselves along by lifelines rigged by a rope from the fore rigging to the main, and from there aft to the davit.
The Airlie plunged so heavily that shortly after leaving the ice, the jib was washed from the bowsprit and went slatting like thunder into the wind. The sudden loss of headsail brought the vessel out of control, and a heavy boarding sea broke over the port bow, sweeping the decks with a deluge of rushing water and flying spray. Several of us were swept into the lee rigging. In a panic, I thought that I had gone overboard, when the shroud suddenly intervened.
Still trembling from this close squeak, I heard the Skipper bellow:
“Look lively there, for’ard, one o’ ye, an’ secure that jib.”
As the nearest, it was obviously my task, but I was still unnerved from my experience with the boarding sea, and while I hesitated, Louis was already working his way to take my place.
It was extremely hazardous going out on the bowsprit, but the brave fellow never hesitated. Far out in the flying blackness, buried again and again by the great waves, like a fighting gamecock, Louis fisted and grappled until his task was accomplished. Then, working his precarious way inboard, drenched and panting, he came aft, hand over hand, along the lifeline.
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