The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works

by Jack Williamson

  “No. Is it lit? Where? The men say they’re blind, too.”

  “Here, forrard end o’ the table.”

  The captain reached this end, searched with his hands, and burned them on the hot glass of a lantern. He removed the bowl and singed the hair on his wrists. The smell came to his nostrils.

  “I’m blind, too,” he groaned. “Angel, it’s the moon. We’re moonstruck—moon-blind. And we’re adrift in a squall. Steward,” he said as he made his way toward the stairs, “light the binnacle, and stop that whining. Maybe some one can see a little.”

  When he reached the deck he called to the men, growling, cursing, and complaining on the poop. “Down below with you all!” he ordered. “Pass through and out the forrard door. If any man sees the light on the cabin table, let that man sing out.”

  They obeyed him. Twenty men passed through the cabin and again climbed the poop stairs, their lamentations still troubling the night. But not one had seen the lantern. Some said that they could not open their eyes at all; some complained that their faces were swollen; others that their mouths were twisted up to where their ears should be; and one man averred that he could not breathe through his nose.

  “It’ll only last a few days, boys,” said the captain, bravely; “we shouldn’t have slept in the moonlight in these latitudes. Drop the lead over, one of you—weather side. The devil knows where we’re drifting, and the small anchor won’t hold now; we’ll save it.” Captain Swarth was himself again.

  But not so his men. They had become children, with children’s fear of the dark. Even the doughty Angel Todd was oppressed by the first horror of the situation, speaking only when spoken to. Above the rushing sound of wind and the smacking of short seas could be heard the voice of the steward in the cabin, while an occasional heart-borne malediction or groan—according to temperament—added to the distraction on deck. One man, more self-possessed than the rest, had dropped the lead over the side. An able seaman needs no eyes to heave the lead.

  “A quarter six,” he sang out, and then, plaintively: “We’ll fetch up on the Barrier, capt’n. S’pose we try an’ get the other hook over.”

  “Yes, yes,” chorused some of the braver spirits. “It may hold. We don’t want to drown on the reef. Let’s get it over. Chain’s overhauled.”

  “Let the anchor alone,” roared the captain. “No anchor-chain’ll hold in this. Keep that lead a-going, Tom Plate, if it’s you. What bottom do you find?”

  “Quarter less six,” called the leadsman. “Soft bottom. We’re shoaling.”

  “Angel,” said the captain to his mate, who stood close to him, “we’re blowing out the south channel. We’ve been drifting long enough to fetch up on the reef if it was in our way. There’s hard bottom in the north channel, and the twenty-fathom lead wouldn’t reach it half a length from the rocks.”

  The mate had nothing to say.

  “And the south channel lay due southeast from our moorings,” continued the captain. “Wind’s nor’west, I should say, right down from the hilltops; and I’ve known these blasted West India squalls to last three days, blowing straight and hard. This has the smell of a gale in it already. Keep that lead a-going, there.”

  “No bottom,” answered the leadsman.

  “Good enough,” said the captain, cheerfully.

  “No bottom,” was called repeatedly, until the captain sang out: “That’ll do the lead.” Then the leadsman coiled up the line, and they heard his rasping, unpleasant voice, cursing softly but fiercely to himself. Captain Swarth descended the stairs, silenced the steward with a blow, felt of the clock hands, secured his pistols, and returned to the deck.

  “We’re at sea,” he said. “Two hands to the wheel. Loose and set the foretopmast-staysails and the foretopsail. Staysail first. Let a man stay in the slings to square the yard by the feel as it goes up.”

  “What for?” they answered complainingly. “What ye goin’ to do? We can’t see. Why didn’t you bring to when you had bottom under you?”

  “No arguments!” yelled Swarth. “Forrard with you. What are you doing on the poop, anyway? If you can’t see, you can feel, and what more do you want? Jump, now. Set that head-sail and get her ’fore the wind—quick, or I’ll drop some of you.”

  They knew their captain, and they knew the ropes—on the blackest of dark nights. Blind men climbed aloft, and felt for foot-ropes and gaskets. Blind men on deck felt for sheets, halyards, and braces, and in ten minutes the sails were set, and the brig was charging wildly along before the gale, with two blind men at the wheel endeavoring to keep her straight by the right and left pressure of the wind on their faces.

  “Keep the wind as much on the port quarter as you can without broaching to,” yelled the captain in their ears, and they answered and did their best. She was a clean-lined craft and steered easily; yet the off-shore sea which was rising often threw her around until nearly in the trough. The captain remained by them, advising and encouraging.

  “Where’re ye goin’, Bill?” asked the mate, weakly, as he scrambled up to him.

  “Right out to sea, and, unless we get our eyes back soon, right across to the Bight of Benin, three thousand miles from here. We’ve no business on this coast in this condition. What ails you, Angel? Lost your nerve?”

  “Mebbe, Bill.” The mate’s voice was hoarse and strained. “This is new to me. I’m falling—falling—all the time.”

  “So am I. Brace up. We’ll get used to it. Get a couple of hands aft and heave the log. We take our departure from Kittredge Point, Barbados Island, at six o’clock this morning of the 10th October. We’ll keep a Geordie’s log-book—with a jack-knife and a stick.”

  They hove the log for him. It was marked for a now useless 28-second sand-glass, which Captain Swarth replaced by a spare chronometer, held to his ear in the companionway. It ticked even seconds, and when twenty-eight of them had passed he called, “Stop.” The markings on the line that had slipped through the mate’s fingers indicated an eight-knot speed.

  “Seven, allowing for wild steering,” said the captain when he had stowed away his chronometer and returned to the deck. “Angel, we know we’re going about sou’east by east, seven knots. There’s practically no variation o’ the compass in these seas, and that course’ll take us clear of Cape St. Roque. Just as fast as the men can stand it at the wheel, we’ll pile on canvas and get all we can out o’ this good wind. If it takes us into the southeast trades, well and good. We can feel our way across on the trade-wind—unless we hit something, of course. You see, it blows almost out of the east on this side, and’ll haul more to the sou’east and south’ard as we get over. By the wind first, then we’ll square away as we need to. We’ll know the smell o’ the trades—nothing like it on earth—and the smell o’ the Gold Coast, Ivory Coast, Slave Coast, and the Kameruns. And I’ll lay odds we can feel the heat o’ the sun in the east and west enough to make a fair guess at the course. But it won’t come to that. Some of us ’ll be able to see pretty soon.”

  It was wild talk, but the demoralized mate needed encouraging. He answered with a steadier voice: “Lucky we got in grub and water yesterday.”

  “Right you are, Angel. Now, in case this holds on to us, why, we’ll find some of our friends over in the Bight, and they’ll know by our rig that something’s wrong. Flanders is somewhere on the track—you know he went back to the nigger business—and Chink put a slave-deck in his hold down Rio way last spring. And old man Slack—I did him a service when I crippled the corvette that was after him, and he’s grateful. Hope we’ll meet him. I’d rather meet Chink than Flanders in the dark, and I’d trust a Javanese trader before either. If either of them come aboard we’ll be ready to use their eyes for our benefit, not let ’em use ours for theirs. Flanders once said he liked the looks of this brig.”

  “S’pose we run foul of a bulldog?”

  “We’ll have to chance it. This coast’s full o’ them, too. Great guns, man! Would you drift around and do nothing? Anywhere east of d
ue south there’s no land nearer than Cape Orange, and that’s three hundred and fifty miles from here. Beginning tomorrow noon, we’ll take deep-sea soundings until we strike the trade-wind.”

  The negro cook felt his way through the preparing of meals and served them on time. The watches were set, and sail was put on the brig as fast as the men became accustomed to the new way of steering, those relieved always imparting what they had learned to their successors. Before nightfall on that first day they were scudding under foresail, topsail and topgallantsail and maintopsail, with the spanker furled as useless, and the jib adding its aid to the foretopmast-staysail in keeping the brig before the quartering seas which occasionally climbed aboard. The bowsprit light was rigged nightly; they hove the log every two hours; and Captain Swarth made scratches and notches on the sliding-hood of the companionway, while careful to wind his chronometer daily.

  But, in spite of the cheer of his indomitable courage and confidence, his men, with the exception of a few, dropped into a querulous, whining discontent. Mr. Todd, spurred by his responsibility, gradually came around to something like his old arbitrary self. Yank Tate, the carpenter, maintained through it all a patient faith in the captain, and, in so far as his influence could be felt, acted as a foil to the irascible, fault-finding Tom Plate, the forecastle lawyer, the man who had been at the lead-line at Barbados. But the rest of them were dazed and nerveless, too shaken in brain and body to consider seriously Tom’s proposition to toss the afterguard overboard and beach the brig on the South American coast, where they could get fresh liver of shark, goat, sheep, or bullock, which even a “nigger” knew was the only cure for moon-blindness.

  They had not yet recovered from the unaccustomed debauch; their clouded brains seemed too large for their skulls, and their eyeballs ached in their sockets, while they groped tremblingly from rope to rope at the behest of the captain or mate.

  So Tom marked himself for future attention by insolent and disapproving comments on the orders of his superiors, and a habit of moving swiftly to another part of the deck directly he had spoken, which prevented the blind and angry captain from finding him in the crowd.

  Dim as must have been the light of day through the pelting rain and storm-cloud, it caused increased pain in their eyes, and they bound them with their neckerchiefs, applying meanwhile such remedies as forecastle lore could suggest. The captain derided these remedies, but frankly confessed his ignorance of anything but time as a means of cure. And so they existed and suffered through a three days’ damp gale and a fourth day’s dead calm, when the brig rolled scuppers under with all sail set, ready for the next breeze. It came, cool, dry, and faint at first, then brisker—the unmistakable trade-wind. They boxed the brig about and braced sharp on the starboard tack, steering again by the feel of the wind and the rattling of shaking leeches aloft. The removal of bandages to ascertain the sun’s position by sense of light or increase of pain brought agonized howls from the experimenters, and this deterred the rest. Not even by its warmth could they locate it. It was overhead at noon and useless as a guide. In the early morning and late afternoon, when it might have indicated east and west, its warmth was overcome by the coolness of the breeze. So they steered on blindly, close-hauled on the starboard tack, nearly as straight a course as though they were whole men.

  They took occasional deep-sea soundings with the brig shaking in the wind, but found no bottom, and at the end of fifteen days a longer heave to the ground-swell was evidence to Captain Swarth’s mind that he was passing Cape St. Roque, and the soundings were discontinued.

  “No use bothering about St. Paul Rocks or the Rocas, Angel,” said he. “They rise out o’ the deep sea, and if we’re to hit, soundings won’t warn us in time. I take it we’ll pass between them and well north of Ascension.” So he checked in the yards a little and brought the wind more abeam.

  One day Yank Tate appeared at the captain’s elbow, and suggested, in a low voice, that he examine the treasure-chests in the ’tween-deck. “I was down stowing away some oakum,” he said, “an’ I was sure I heard the lid close; but nobody answered me, an’ I couldn’t feel anybody.”

  Captain Swarth descended to his cabin and found his keys missing; then he and the carpenter visited the chests. They were locked tight, and as heavy as ever.

  “Some one has the keys, Yank, and has very likely raided the diamonds. We can’t do anything but wait. He can’t get away. Keep still about it.”

  The air became cooler as they sailed on; and judging that the trade-wind was blowing more from the south than he had allowed for, the captain brought the wind squarely abeam, and the brig sailed faster. Still, it was too cool for the latitude, and it puzzled him, until a man came aft and groaned that he had lifted his bandage to bathe his eyes, and had unmistakably seen the sun four points off the port quarter; but his eyes were worse now, and he could not do it again.

  “Four points off!” exclaimed Swarth. “Four o’clock in the afternoon. That’s just about where the sun ought to be heading due east, and far enough south o’ the line to bring this cool weather. We’re not far from Ascension. Never knew the sou’east trade to act like this before. Must ha’ been blowing out o’ the sou’west half the time.”

  A week later they were hove to on the port tack under double-reefed topsails, with a cold gale of wind screaming through the rigging and cold green seas boarding their weather bow. It was the first break in the friendly trade-wind, and Swarth confessed to himself—though not to his men—that he was out of his reckoning; but one thing he was sure of—that this was a cyclone with a dangerous center.

  The brig labored heavily during the lulls as the seas rose, and when the squalls came, flattening them to a level, she would lie down like a tired animal, while the æolian song aloft prevented orders being heard unless shouted near by. Captain Swarth went below and smashed the glass of an aneroid barometer (newly invented and lately acquired from an outward-bound Englishman), in which he had not much confidence, but which might tell him roughly of the air-density. Feeling of the indicator, and judging by the angle it made with the center—marked by a ring at the top—he found a measurement which startled him. Setting the adjustable hand over the indicator for future reference, he returned to the deck, ill at ease, and ordered the topsails goose-winged. By the time the drenched and despairing blind men had accomplished this, a further lowering of the barometer induced him to furl topsails and foretopmast-staysail, and allow the brig to ride under a storm-spanker. Then the increasing wind required that this also should be taken in, and its place filled by a tarpaulin lashed to the weather main-rigging.

  “Angel,” said the captain, shouting into the mate’s ear, “there’s only one thing to account for this. We’re on the right tack for the Southern Ocean; but the storm-center is overtaking us faster than we can drift away from it. We must scud out of its way.”

  So they took in the tarpaulin and set the foretopmast-staysail again, and, with the best two helmsmen at the wheel, they sped before the tempest for four hours, during which there was no increase of the wind and no change in the barometer; it still remained at its lowest reading.

  “Keep the wind as much on the port quarter as you dare,” ordered Swarth. “We’re simply sailing around the center, and perhaps in with the vortex.”

  They obeyed him as they could, and in a few hours more there was less fury in the blast and a slight rise in the barometer.

  “I was right,” said the captain. “The center will pass us now. We’re out of its way.”

  They brought the brig around amid a crashing of seas over the port rail, and stowing the staysail, pinned her again on the port tack with the tarpaulin. But a few hours of it brought an increase of wind and a fall of the barometer.

  “What in damnation does it mean, Angel?” cried the captain, desperately. “By all laws of storms we ought to drift away from the center.”

  The mate could not tell; but a voice out of the night, barely distinguishable above the shrieking wind, answe
red him.

  “You—all-fired—fool—don’t—you—know—any—more—than—to—heave—to—in—the—Gulf—Stream?”

  Then there was the faintest disturbance in the sounds of the sea, indicating the rushing by of a large craft.

  “What!” roared Swarth. “The Gulf Stream? I’ve lost my reckoning. Where am I? Ship ahoy! Where am I?”

  There was no answer, and he stumbled down to the main-deck among his men, followed by the mate.

  “Draw a bucket of water, one of you,” he ordered.

  This was done, and he immersed his hand. The water was warm.

  “Gulf-Stream,” he yelled frantically, “Gulf Stream—how in hell did we get up here? We ought to be down near St. Helena. Angel, come here. Let’s think. We sailed by the wind on the southeast trade for—no, we didn’t. It was the northeast trade. We caught the northeast trade, and we’ve circled all over the Western Ocean.”

  “You’re a bully full-rigged navigator, you are,” came the sneering, rasping voice of Tom Plate from the crowd. “Why didn’t you drop your hook at Barbados, and give us a chance for our eyes?”

  The captain lunged toward him on the reeling deck; but Tom moved on.

  “Your time is coming, Tom Plate,” he shouted insanely; then he climbed to the poop, and when he had studied the situation awhile, called his bewildered mate up to him.

  “We were blown out of the north entrance o’ the bay, Angel, instead of the south, as we thought. I was fooled by the soundings. At this time o’ the year Barbados is about on the thermal equator—half-way between the trades. This is a West India cyclone, and we’re somewhere around Hatteras. No wonder the port tack drifted us into the center. Storms revolve against the sun north o’ the line, and with the sun south of it. Oh, I’m the two ends and the bight of a damned fool! Wear ship!” he added in a thundering roar.

  They put the brig on the starboard tack, and took hourly soundings with the deep-sea lead. As they hauled it in for the fourth time, the men called that the water was cold; and on the next sounding the lead reached bottom at ninety fathoms.