A Dream of the North Sea Part 10

The two ambulance-service men went below, declining to show any misgivings, and they had a good, desultory chat before anything happened to call them on deck. They talked of the poor bruised fellows whom they had seen; then of home; then of the splendid future when men would be kinder, and no fisherman with festering wounds would ever be permitted to die like a dog in a stinking kennel. Pleasant, honest talk it was, for the talkers were pleasant and honest. No bad man can talk well. Our two gentlemen had learned a long lesson of unselfishness, and each of them seemed to become gentler and more worthy in proportion as he gave up more and more of his comfort and his labour to serve others.

At last Ferrier said, "Well, Tom, we had a heavy turn in the autumn. If we go this time we'll go together, and I've often wondered what that could be like. What do men say when they meet the last together? Whew-w!

How I hate death. The monster! The beastly cold privation. To leave even a North Sea smack must be bitter."

The patients were listening; the man with concussion was gone, cured, and his place was held by a burly man who had tried (as heavy fellows will) to haul his own fourteen stone up to the main-boom during a breeze, in order to repair a reef-earring. The vessel came up to the wind, and the jar flung poor Ebenezer Mutton clash on to the deck.

Luckily he did not land on his skull, but he had a dislocated ankle.

Ebenezer whispered, "I heern you talkin' about the gale, sir, and you're right; we've got somethin' to come. I have a left arm that can beat any gla.s.s ever was seen. I come down from the jaws of the gaff just when we was snuggin' her before the gale in '66, and my arm went in four places.

Ever since then that there arm tells every change as plain as plain can be. Yes, sir, it's hard to die, even out off a North Sea smack, as you say. Just before the '66 breeze I used often to think, 'Shall I go overboard?' but when we was disabled, and skipper told us 'twas every man for hisself, I looked queer. My arm says there's bad a-comin', and I know you don't skeer easy, or a wouldn't tell you."

A hollow sound filled the whole arch of the sky; it was a great, bewildering sound like a cry--an immense imprecation of some stricken t.i.tan.

"What can that be?" murmured Lennard, with his bold face blanched. "That caps everything."

The masterful sound held on for a little, and then sank into a tired sort of moan.

"Callin' them together, sir,--that's what some o' the West Country chaps calls the King o' the Winds speakin'. It's only snow gettin' locked in the sky, and you'll see it come away in a little."

"I don't know what it is, Ebenezer, but I don't like it."

On deck the night was black, the splendid green of the west had burnt out, and a breeze was making little efforts from time to time, with little hollow moans.

"Bad, bad, bad, bad, sir," barked the skipper, angrily.

The vanward flights of twirling flakes came on then, as if suddenly unleashed, the wind sprang up, and the great fight began. If you, whoever you may be, and two more strong men had tried to shut an ordinary door in the teeth of that first shock, you would have failed, for the momentum was like that of iron.

"Steady, and look out," the skipper yelled.

The third hand was lifted off his feet and dashed into the lee channels.

Ferrier fought hard, but he was clutched by the hand of the wind, and held against the mizen-mast; he could just clutch the rest in which a lifebuoy was hanging, and that alone saved him from being felled.

The Lord is a Man of War! Surely His hosts were abroad now. No work of man's hands could endure the onset of the forces let loose on that bad night. The sea jumped up like magic, and hurried before the lash of the wind. Then, with a darkening swoop, came the snowstorm, hurled along on wide wings; the last remnants of light fled; the vessel was shut in, and the devoted company on board could only grope in the murk on deck. No one would stay below, for the sudden, unexampled a.s.sault of the hurricane had touched the nerve of the coolest.

I am told by one who was on a wide heath at the beginning of that hurricane, that he was coated with solid ice from head to foot on the windward side; his hair and beard were icicles; his spaniel cowered and refused to move; and a splendid, strong horse, which was being driven right in the teeth of the wind, suddenly put its nose to the ground, set its forelegs wide apart, and refused to go on. Not far from the horse was a great poplar, and this tree suddenly snapped like a stick of macaroni; the horse started, whirled round, and galloped off with the wind behind.

What must it have been at sea? Men durst not look to windward, for a hard ma.s.s seemed to be thrust into nostrils and eyes, so that one was forced to gasp and choke. As for the turmoil!--all Gravelotte, with half a million men engaged, could not have made such a soul-quelling, overmastering sound. Every capacity of sound, every possible discordant vibration of the atmosphere was at work; and so, with bellow on bellow, crash on crash, vast mult.i.tudinous shriek on shriek, that fateful tempest went on.

Ferrier found that unless he could get under the lee of something or other, he must soon be sheathed in a coat of ice that would prevent him from stirring at all. Oddly enough, he found afterwards that the very fate he dreaded had befallen several forlorn seamen: the icy missiles of the storm froze them in; the wind did not chill them, it throttled them, and they were found frozen rigid in various positions.

The mate came and whispered in Ferrier's ear (for shouting was useless), "The skipper would like a word with you. We'll keep some sort of a look-out, but it isn't much good at present. Come into our cabin."

Lewis was not sorry, for the waves began to take the vessel without "noticing" her, as it were, just as a good hunter takes an easy ditch in his stride. If one came perpendicularly upon her, it was easy to see what must happen.

The skipper said, "I want you gentlemen to a.s.sist me. I'm ordered to obey _you_, but I know this sea, and I tell you that I'm doubtful whether I shall save the vessel. I can't keep her hove-to much longer, for this simple reason as she'll bury herself and us. I've got two hundred and forty-four miles to run home. Will you let me run her? If so, I'll take her in under storm canvas. She's splendid before wind and sea, and I can save her that way; if we stop as we are, I fear we drown.

I've seen so many years of it that I don't so much mind, but having you is a terrible thing. Hishht, a sea's coming!--I can tell by the lull."

Then the two landsmen cowered involuntarily, and looked in each other's eyes with a wild surmise, for a shock came which made the vessel quiver like a tuning-fork in every fibre; the very pannikins on the cabin floor rattled, and all the things in the pantry went like rapidly chattering teeth. It was not like an ordinary blow of the sea. The skipper rushed aft, hoping to get on deck through Ferrier's cabin, but he met a cataract of water which blinded him, and he came back saying, "I doubt her deck won't stand another like that. Now, gentlemen, it's for you to decide."

"Skipper, send Bill up to help me with the boat. That last's drove her abreast the skylight."

The one look-out man had saved himself. How, only a smacksman can tell.

The skipper came down again.

"Now, gentlemen, shall I run or not?" "Well, skipper, if we get through this we shall be more needed than ever."

"Yes, sir; but if that last sea hadn't glanced a bit on our starboard bow, we _shouldn't_ have got through. We've saved the boat, but she was snapped from the grips like a rotten tooth."

"But, skipper, we may be p.o.o.ped in running, or we may do some damage to the rudder and broach-to. Then we should be worse off than here."

"Very well, gentlemen. I'm not concerned for myself. My duty's done now, and I'll do my best. I advise you to take some coffee, and try to get a few hours' rest before the pinch comes. You'll not get much rest then."

Another sea came, and another; the sound of the wind paralyzed thought and made speech impossible. Had any one said, "The end of the world has come," you would have felt only a mild surprise, for even the capacity for fear or apprehension was stunned as the brain is stunned by a blow.

"I can't stand this any longer, Tom. Even brandy wouldn't do much good for more than an hour. Do you hear me?"

Tom nodded in a dazed way.

"Well, then, let's go into the open somehow. Perhaps the skipper's strong, hot coffee _will_ wake us. Anyhow, let us try a cup."

Oh! that indescribable night! To know that death was feasting in that blackness; to feel that vigilance was of no avail; to turn away convulsed from the iron push of the demoniac force which for the time seemed to have taken the place of an atmosphere. Smash! Rattle. Then a wild whistling; a many lashes, that flapped and cracked; then the fall of the spar, and the deep, quick sigh from Lennard as it whizzed close by him. The gaff of the mizen had broken away, halliards and all, as if a supernatural knife had been drawn across by a strong hand. The men were hanging on, while a bellying, uncontrollable canvas buffeted them as if it had volition and sense, and strove to knock their senses out of them. A canvas adrift is like an unruly beast. All hands came through the after-cabin, and attacked the thundering sail.

"For your lives now, chaps, before another sea comes! I can't slack away these halliards. Bob, out knife, and up in the rings; cut them away."

The gaff had fallen, but it was not clear yet. In some mysterious fashion the mizen halliards had yielded and slipped for some distance after a sudden shock had cut the gaff halliards and let the jaws of the gaff free; so now the sail would neither haul up nor come down. Like a cat Bob sprang up the remaining rings, and hacked at the gear; the sail fell--and so did Bob, with a dull thud.

"Oh! skipper, that's a bad 'un."

"Cast a line round him till we've stowed. Jim, take hold of her; she's falling off! Shove her to the wind again till we're done! Now, lads, all of you on to the sheet! Haul! oh, haul! Slack away them toppin' lifts.

So; now we've got her! Where's Bob?"

"Doctor's got him below, skipper." Poor Bob had tried to save himself with his right arm, and his hand had been bent backwards over, and doubled back on his forearm. Bob was settled for the rest of the gale.

Lewis soon had the broken limb put up, and Bob stolidly smoked and pondered on the inequalities of life. Why was he, and not another, told off to spring up that reeling mizen into a high breeze that ended by mastering him, and flinging him as if he had been a poor wrestler matched with a champion? Here he was--crippled.

"Well, Bob, if this is a specimen, we shall see something when it clears."

"Yes, doctor; you may say that, you may. I never see nothing like it. If you give a man ten hundred thousand goulden sovereigns, and you says, 'Tell me directly you see anything comin',' he couldn't. When I was on the look-out, I held this 'ere hand, as is broken, up before my eyes, and I couldn't see it, sir--and that's the gospel, as I'm here!"

"Do you think we're out of the track of ships?" "I know no more than Adam, sir. h.e.l.lo! what's that?"

"Up here, sir--up, quick!"

Ferrier's heart jumped as he thought--"Tom."

"Haul on here, sir, with us. G.o.d be praised, he took his rope over with him. Haul, for the Lord's sake! Now! now!"

Ferrier lashed at his work in a fury of effort: a sea sent him on his knees, and yet he lay hack against the inrush of water, and hauled with all the weight of body and arms.

"Haul, my men! A good life is at the end of that line. Haul! the ice may congeal his pulses before you get at him! Haul! oh, haul!"