With the big seas still boiling up threateningly in the waist, at Louis’ suggestion, the two of us came aft to the poop, the driest place on the decks. There, at the wheel, beside the mighty MacEacheren, we found Cap’n Jock, in his glory, riding, as it were, on the crest of the storm.
With cool-headed daring, not too bold, and not too cautious, he gauged his chances and ventured always to the limit. Every minute, he kept his watch on deck, fighting like himself to gain every last ounce of advantage, as with keen and watchful eye, he made use of every lull and slant, to drive his vessel across the long, fierce, swooping combers.
To look at the howling blackness racing past was to feel a sense of terror. But to look at our Skipper was a sight to set us yelling with the lust of battle.
“Aye, mon, mon, but is he no a bonnie fighter?” burst out Little Rory, in sudden admiration.
There was hypnotic power in the presence of Foul Weather Jock that infused his crew.
As long as we were on deck, the sight of this invincible master was enough to drive out fear. But when the magnetism of his presence was withdrawn, cold chills began to gather.
As Louis and I were relieved from our watch and went below, we found an atmosphere of terror reigning in the thundering foc’sle.
It was a straining, nervous, jumpy crew that lay there in their bunks, unsleeping, unresting, propped up on elbows, starting at every new or fancied alarm, or remembering with horror our close squeak in the ice field. What might happen if more ice should be encountered?
For myself, I was completely exhausted from the arduous exertions of my first day at ocean racing, hard enough on grown men, heavier still on a boy.
So in the bucking, kicking foc’sle, amid unresting watchmates, I slept as peacefully as though I were in my little bed in the Craignish Glen.
I had not been sleeping long, when I was
awakened by a long piercing yell of terror!
Coming to with a start, I found that our vessel had been thrown completely on her beam ends. From the force of the roll, Louis was catapulted clean out of his bunk and pitched sprawling on top of me in the opposite bunk to lee’ard.
It was Louis’ blood-freezing yell that awakened me from my peaceful slumber.
In a twinkling the happy realm of dreams was changed to a place that seemed like some unspeakable Gehenna. The swinging lamp had gutted out, and through the companion, down into the infernal darkness of the death trap came a Niagara of seething water, while like a den of lost souls, the imprisoning foc’sle echoed to Gaelic prayers and imprecations.
CHAPTER XXIII
Magic O’ The Pipes
The Airlie had been tripped by a cross sea, and, in fisherman’s parlance lay “sprawled out,” so that her sails were in the water, her lee side completely buried.
The cook was scalded by a tumbling pot of boiling water, while steam, and smoke and gas and living coals from the galley stove rendered a regulation hell. Sea chests, pots, pans, boots, stores, and human beings were rolled and heaped indiscriminately. Altogether, there was a frightful mixing up down there in the Stygian gloom of the foc’sle. Our situation could not have appeared more hopeless, but before one had time to gather his wits, the racing schooner had righted herself and started to come up.
The instant she was back again upon an even keel, I leaped for the companion ladder.
As I emerged through the fore scuttle, the wind struck into our sails, and starting ahead with a rush, the old girl drew herself out from beneath the tons of water under which she was buried from the mainmast aft.
Pale, trembling, panting, those below came bursting up, breathing with thankful gasps the fresh air, gazing with gratitude upon the moon and stars. Indeed, the wide, free canopy of heaven never looked so good to me as it did in that first moment of escape.
All of us were impressed by our miraculous deliverance, and more than one deep-souled Highlander sent up his prayer of thanks to the Blessed Mary who had saved him from a watery grave, and to Saint Michael, the Guardian and Patron Saint of the sea.
But if the rest were devoutly thankful, no such emotion welled up in the fiery soul of Jock MacPhee. He was a great man for prayers, ashore, but in the midst of an ocean race, he had scant inclination for devotions.
Hearing a Gaelic ave, muttered beside him by Allan MacEacheren, sent the Skipper blazing forth at white heat:
“No Mary and no Michael’ll save ye aboard this hooded hooker I It’s only yer two fists, and the leapin’ lightnin’ in yer heels that can preserve fer ye the breath o’ God that’s in yer nostrils! If it’s devotions yer wantin’, one gang o’ ye can take it out on yer prayer handles cleanin’ up that bloody mess along the waist, and the rest o’ ye can haul fer the salvation o’ yer;
souls on them bitched up sheets and halliards. Now, then, jump, me lads, and don’t forget that ye are Judique men !”
Such was the potency of this one man upon our poop that his passion was soon flaming up again throughout the crew. No rum ration was passed out, but for his brother Gaels the spirit of our Skipper was more fiercely intoxicating than gallons of “White-eye.”
A few moments before the Airlie was lying on her beam ends, helpless, stricken, awaiting sure doom. Apparently everything was lost, and then out of dire extremity a firebrand Skipper on her poop had breathed new life into vessel and crew alike.
At the wheel, the spirit of Cap’n Jock was rising with the fierceness of the gale. As though it were a human being, he continued his rhapsodies of the storm.
“Come on! Come on!” he roared. “Judique is on the floor, and who the hell will dare to put her off.”
This was enough to set Wild Archie and all the rest of that battling brood into a whooping outburst.
Little Rory, the piper, could not withstand the inspiration of such a moment Leaving his toiling watchmates on the deck, he went tumbling down into the sodden cabin to loosen his immortal soul upon the bagpipes.
“Ye canna tune yer pipes down there, can ye?” sang out the Skipper.
“Aye, I could tune ‘em on the hinges o’ hell at sic a moment,” answered Little Rory, and soon the music of his drones came booming through the cabin skylight, shrieking out, “Cogadh na Sith” (War or Peace), an ancient pibroch that sounded with startling effect into the teeth of the storm.
At the skirl of the pipes our Highland crew became like men possessed :
“I may be dead in a minute,” sang out Wild Archie, “but I’m in me glory now.”
After “Cogadh na Sith,” other tunes followed, calling up from the deeps of time the Gael’s great past, tunes of the galley on the wave, tunes that set men on the foray, tunes of the broken clans, tunes of the tartan against the world.
As one of the old blood, I always loved the pibroch, but never before did I hear it with such effect. Blending with the storm winds and the seas, its refrain seemed to run like fire through blood and brain.
Whilst the rest of us went to our tasks with a will, Little Rory remained at his pipes doing the work of twenty with his wonderful lungs of leather, for the witching strains of his screaming drones made every other man as good as twain. Shriller and louder the pipes skirled, while every Hielan’man aboard leaped and whooped, accomplishing his tasks with headlong impetu- ousness. Men who ashore appeared dour and grave, were under the spell of the pibroch at last aroused to the acme of conflict with waves and tempest.
In our wild, tearing flight, even the passage of time seemed to fade. But there was one ever mindful, and finally Cap’n Jock sang out:
“Hi there, Johnnie Angus, run down into the cabin an’ tell us what’s the hour o’ night.”
Darting below, I straightway reappeared, calling: “Eleven o’clock.”
“Eleven,” repeated the Skipper. “Seven hours out, and by the log ninety miles from MacNairs. Thirty miles yet to
go, an’ three hours in which to do it.”
For a moment he made further mental calculations, and then exclaimed:
“Aye, we’ll make it in less than ten hours all
right, and beat every record of the!”
Jock’s vainglorious boasting, so utterly unlike him, was suddenly cut short by an ominous sound aloft: “Whirr—upp—bang!” With a report like a siege gun, the great staysail, torn to ribbons, flapped and slatted away to leeward before a squall of unexpected fury.
Looking after the tattered sail, Jock announced solemnly:
“ ‘Twas an act o’ God!”
“ ‘Twas a miracle,” groaned Murdie Chis- holm, “that kept the whole suit from goin’.”
Hardly had he spoken, before there came another long, ripping crack, as the foretops’l and foretopmast carried away together, while the Airlie shuddered through all her being, as though she had been riven by a giant ax.
“Aloft there and clear away the top hammer,” bellowed the Skipper.
Together with several others, I was rushing up the ratlins, when Wild Archie, who had just been tending the log line, let out a shout of dismay.
CHAPTER XXIV
Strategy
I thought at first that he had gone overboard, but, glancing aft, I beheld him, with hand outstretched as though to point out something on the horizon.
Gazing across the moonlit sea, in the direction indicated, I was startled to behold another schooner, pressing us close, about half a mile to windward, on the port quarter.
All hands stared, while Jock, with far-seeing eye, exclaimed:
“By the Powers, if that ain’t Black Dan wi’ the Dundee “
“What makes ye so sure?” queried the mate.
“No mistake about it, his was the only clipper bow in the bunch. That’s the Dundee all right, well up to weather and pressing us close for the last lap.”
“Just after our foretopmast carried away. A pretty mess you’ll put us in when we round the Nor’ Wes’ Bar, and start thrashing to windward.”
“Yea, it looks bad,” replied the Skipper gloomily. All the fire of a few moments before seemed to have forsaken him; he was once more merely a gray, old man, of dubious exterior.
Then, as Little Rory, with inspiration went again to his screaming drones, I saw a spark rekindling in the Skipper’s eye.
“Perhaps I got a trick or two in me bonnet yet,” he muttered.
“Trust him,” Louis confided. “Get Foul Weather Jock in a corner, and ye’ll always find that there’s another kick left in him.”
On this especial race, thus far, fortune had favored the Dundee. When we split tacks and went through Canso Harbor, Black Dan held his course, steering straight for the open sea. Thus he had escaped the ice which clipped off at least half an hour from our racing time, and now with his foretopmast intact, Black Dan was obviously in far better condition for the windward work of the last lap. Coming to the prearranged berth on the opposite side of an intervening bar meant at least two hours’ stiff thrash to windward.
Gradually, but none the less surely, the Dundee began to close in upon us. For some time, both vessels were taking soundings, and each had his lookout aloft, to pick up the first flash of the West Point of Sable Island.
From both lookouts, simultaneously, there came the cry:
“Lights on the starboard bow!”
With this, Black Dan sang out, “Ready about,” and putting his wheel down hard alee, he shifted from port to starboard tack. The next minute, steering S.S.W. with the wind aft, wing and wing, he came bearing directly upon us.
Aboard the Airlie we stood ready to follow suit. Every man instinctively took stations, waiting for the expected order. But, strangely enough, the order was withheld.
Again and again, I found myself turning aft toward the Skipper, always an enigma at sea, never more so than now, as he stood to his wheel, imperturbable as a Brahmin god.
Whatever was passing in his mind, his thin, pressed lips and inscrutable face gave no slightest clew. We listened, but no word escaped him. With a grim set to his under jaw, he gazed steadily and unflinchingly before.
The Airlie had the right of way.
But here was a danger spot where trivialities like right of way were out of question.
Why did we continue our old course S.E., when the warning light told us that every second now we should be driving it S.S.W. to round the dreadful bar that stretched with ruin to the westward of the warning light?
Every one of us aboard Jock’s vessel expected our Skipper to change his course. Black Dan took it for granted that his rival, at the dictates of prudence, would assuredly head off.
And so, mistaking each other’s purpose, the two vessels came tearing toward each other, the Dundee bearing dead upon our weather quarter.
Beside the Skipper at the wheel, the strain of imminent disaster was too much for Allan MacEacheren.
“Ain’t ye goin’ to come about now, Skip?”
“Hold her to her auld course,” was the rejoinder!
Jock held to his purpose with the determination of grim death, while Black Dan, just as sure that we were bound to gybe at the last moment, kept on a course that brought him fair across our bows.
Nearer and nearer the distance closed between the opposing captains, with the crews of each vessel pleading in vain against such folly.
At last, with breath bated for the impending crash, it flashed upon the unwilling brain of Black Dan Campbell that his rival proposed holding to his course in spite of everything.
Reluctantly, Dan gave the order that brought the Dundee up into the wind with an abruptness that buried her lee rail, and threatened under her terrific press, to splinter her spars. As the Dundee momentarily lost way, the Airlie forged onward.
With a sigh of vast relief, I watched our
courses now ranging farther and farther apart After Jock had put a good mile between himself and Black Dan, he shouted: “Douse the lights!”
The intended strategy flashed upon my mind at once. While the others hesitated, dazed and wondering, I carried out our Skipper’s order at a rush.
Looking after us, at that same moment, and watching our lights swallowed up in darkness, Black Dan Campbell doubtless crossed himself, thinking that here was sure proof that we had crashed and foundered.
CHAPTER XXV
“The Bold Man Seldom Gets Hurt”
For twenty miles to the westward of Sable Island there extends a sandy bar, “reeking with wrecks.” On this spot many a brave vessel has been swallowed up completely.
Straight into this zone of menace, with lights extinguished, the Airlie went tearing like a bride of the sea prepared for her dance with death.
The roar of the breakers that could be heard for miles, boomed and thundered around the racing schooner.
For’ard, Louis kept the lead going continually:
“Fifteen.”
“And a half.”
“Fourteen.”
“Thirteen.”
With shoaling water there was a decided change upon the surface. Where there had formerly been a succession of long, black, sloping undulations, now the seas were short, sharp, and boiling white.
After making his rounds testing everything, with the lifelines doubly secured, and with the masthead men lashed aloft, the Skipper returned to his place at the wheel, calling:
“Now, then, get below, everybody, an’ close the slide fast Those that want to stay on deck, look out fer yourselves.”
For a moment, I thought of going below, to be but of harm’s way, but the suspense down there I knew would be unbearable, and so I lashed myself to the weather bitt, near the wheel.
The pair who were steering stood to their waists in boiling water, sometimes nearly submerged. Once, b
efore the menace of a pooping sea, Allan MacEacheren let go the wheel, in terror.
“Hang on, ye fool,” chided the Skipper- “don’t ye know better than to leggo wi’ all that water on her deck.”
Again, in one of the fiercer squalls, we went over so far that Allan called out:
“Will she come up again?”
“She’s got to come up.”
“But what if her ballast shifts?”
“It won’t shift,” was the confident rejoinder.
With increasing shoals, the seas were piling up in an alarming manner. Under the spell of brilliant moonlight the spectacle before us was awe-inspiring and sublime. Wherever the eye turned, there stretched an endless range of foaming breakers, touched with limpid silver underneath the moon, while spindrift blown into the night shone like fairy gold.
Off to starboard, louder than all other noises, could be heard the bellow of a solitary bar. This note of menace was too much for the overwrought nerves and the quaking heart of Mur- die Chisholm. Coming up to the wheel, Murdie began to implore the Skipper to head off, while there was still a chance.
“She’ll never live to get through,” he screamed.
Committed to a course of do-or-die, Cap’n Jock was in no mood to brook remonstrance from some weak-hearted hanger-back.
“Git down below,” he ordered. “Git out o’ me sight, d’ye hear?”
Murdie stood for a moment irresolute, and then the heavy boot of Wild Archie caught him astern, and sent him plunging headlong into the cabin.
With Murdie removed, and with the pipes of Little Rory sounding out their witching strain, every other man aboard was now ready to venture the uttermost.
In our Skipper’s smuggling days, out of Saint Pierre, he had been chased by one of His Majesty’s cruisers. Being forced into a pocket, in this dangerous area, rather than submit to
capture, he had risked shipwreck, and by that strange fortune that often guards the desperate he had tripped upon a navigable channel.
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