Harper's Round Table, June 18, 1895 Part 4

Out forward the sweeping curve of the clipper bow swung swiftly upward, with bobstay and martingale dripping with sparkling brine, and again plunged down with a thunderous roar and a boiling of milk-white foam up to the hawse-holes. Ever and anon a hissing shower of iridescent spray would hurtle across the forecastle deck, and lose itself in the smother of yeasty froth that blew along the lee rail.

Up to windward the sea hardened itself against the luminous horizon in a steel-blue field of cotton-tufted ridges, leaping and falling in wide unrest. Overhead sheets of wreathing vapor rushed across the dense blue sky, and in and out of the rifts the dazzling white sun shot wildly as if in meteoric flight. Captain Elias Joyce leaned against the weather rail of his p.o.o.p deck, and looked contented.

"It'll blow harder before it blows easier, Mr. Bolles," he said to his mate, "but it'll go to the south'ard."

"Ay, ay, sir," said the mate. "And I reckon we'll do very well as we are."

"Yes, let well enough alone," said the Captain. "Come, gentlemen, let's go to dinner."

The gentlemen were Joseph and Henry Brownson, the twin sons of the owner of the ship. They were making this voyage on a sailing-ship for health and recreation after a hard struggle with their final examinations at college. They were well used to the sea, and had served an apprenticeship in many a hearty dash around Brentons Reef Light-ship and the Block Island buoy. They were enjoying every minute of their voyage, but they had yet one great desire to gratify. They wished to get the Captain to spin them a yarn of some strange experience at sea. Up to the present time he had refused to accept their hints. But they had not yet abandoned hope. At the dinner table they renewed the attack, but without result. When the meal was ended, the Captain filled a pipe, and the conversation drifted in various channels. Henry spoke of college celebrations and the foolishness of sending up fire-balloons. The Captain took the pipe out of his mouth, blew a big cloud of smoke, and said, reflectively:

"Well, I don't know. I remember once when a fire-balloon turned out to be a mighty useful thing at sea."

"I'd like to know how," said Joseph.

"Well, if you two young gentlemen won't be bored by hearing a sea yarn, I'll just spin it for you."

The two young men looked at one another. Bored? Well, that was good, after all their clever hints.

"It was a matter of thirty years ago," began the Captain, "when I was only a boy, and was making a voyage much as you gentlemen are, for the pleasure of it. My father, who was a sea captain, was part owner in the _Ellen Burgee_, and he thought it would be a good thing for me to go out and sniff salt air and see blue water. The _Ellen Burgee_ was an old-fashioned ship, with long single topsails, a mackerel-head bow, and tumble-home sides. Her stem was rounded out in a big arch, and she had quarter galleries like a line-of-battle ship. She was a roaring good sailer, though, and her skipper was likely to use bad language if he caught her doing anything under eight knots in a breath of air. She had a handsome cabin, too, had the _Ellen Burgee_, and when the swinging lamp was shedding its soft yellow light over the polished mahogany table, the cushioned lockers, the rugs, and the white and gold paint, it looked like the owner's saloon in a modern schooner yacht. I suppose I didn't know at that time how comfortable I was, but, looking back now, I can't say that I was ever any better off on shipboard."

THE CREW GAVE THREE HEARTY CHEERS AS THE BALLOON AROSE.

"The _Ellen Burgee_ was bound from New York for Table Bay. It's not necessary to go into any account of her cargo, seeing that it has not anything to do with this story, and that it never arrived at its port of destination, anyhow, but went to feed fishes. However, that's running ahead of my reckoning, so I'll just heave to and drift back. We pa.s.sed Sandy Hook with a fair wind and all kites flying. We didn't take a tug every time we went to sea in those days, but used to lie in the Horseshoe for a favoring breeze. I don't know that there's anything serious to tell you about, except that we stopped at Bermuda for three days, and I had my first look at those happy islands. What's more to the point is that a week later, in lat.i.tude 18 15' N., longitude 56 30'

W., we sighted a derelict brig. She was water-logged and abandoned; but our old man thought there might be something aboard her worth saving, and so, as the wind was very light, and we couldn't lose much by backing our fore-topsail yard for a time, he sent a boat to her. The second mate went in it, and came back with a cargo of tissue-paper, ink, pens, and a few other loose things he'd picked up in her cabin. The tissue-paper, he said, would do for the boy--me--to play with. I laughed at him at the time, for I didn't see what use the tissue-paper would be to me. But I made a fire-balloon out of it afterwards, and we were all pretty glad that we had it aboard.

"We were getting down toward the equator when it fell a dead flat calm.

I never saw such a calm before or since, except once. The sea looked like gray oil, its surface was so smooth and gla.s.sy. But out of the southwest there came a swell that kept growing bigger and bigger and bigger. There was not a breath of wind stirring, and the whoo, whoo, whoo of the rush of air in the rigging as the ship rolled sounded like the whistling of some ghostly fog siren. And how she did roll! Every spar and timber in her groaned and squeaked as if in mortal pain. Pots and dishes rattled and banged in the galley, and the whole interior of the ship was filled with strange unaccountable noises. Up above the sky was a sort of dull yellow, and the sun looked as if it were behind smoked gla.s.s. The old man looked at the barometer, and decided that we were in for a gale of wind. So he had the ship made snug under close-reefed main-topsail, a storm jib, and a rag of spanker. In those clothes she was ready for anything that might come along. We lay there rolling in that mad fashion until nearly midnight, and, boy as I was, I thought I should go insane with the deadly, inexorable, heartless swaying of the helpless fabric. I don't believe any man except a hardened old sailor--and not many of them--could keep this side of lunacy if he were becalmed under an equatorial sun in a swell like that for twenty-six hours.

"However, it ended all of a sudden about midnight. I was in my bunk, but I couldn't sleep because of the thumping of the cabin-doors on their hinges. I heard a man come lumbering down to call the Captain, and I slipped out of bed and into my clothes. I reached the deck in time to see a sudden glitter of stars in the northwestern horizon, and to feel a splash of cold wind on my cheek. The next instant the whole air above me was filled with a series of wild yells, as if a million souls were in agony. The gale had struck us, and for an instant I felt as if my breath were driven back into my lungs, so great was the pressure of the wind in my face. The ship heeled over till her lee scuppers ran two feet deep in bubbling water.

"'Down with your helm! Hard down!' shouted the Captain.

"Slowly the vessel's head came up, and she righted herself. She was now close-hauled, and she began to thresh out to windward with a fearful bellowing of the wind out of the straining main-topsail. There was no sea yet; on the contrary, the terrific force of the wind cut down the great swells, and blew the ocean out flat in a sheet of ghostly foam.

But that did not last long. The sea began to run, and the _Ellen Burgee_ began to rear and plunge over the ragged crests, and to thunder down into the black hollows that looked like clefts extending to the bottom of the ocean. At daybreak a mad, a crazy sea presented itself to the sight. The effect of the gale blowing at right angles to the original swell was to pile up the billows in great writhing pyramidal ma.s.ses. The ship labored and groaned fearfully. Tons of water broke over the forecastle deck, and the Captain was alarmed lest the deck seams should open. At six bells in the morning watch the main-topsail blew out of the bolt-ropes with a report like a gun's, and went swirling away into the flying spoondrift down on our lee quarter. A stay-sail was set to do the main-topsail's work, but nothing would prevent the ship from falling so far off at times that the seas broke on her decks in ma.s.ses. All day long she was driven by the wind, and pounded by the seas. Our drift was something frightful, but it was not much out of our course. At four bells in the first watch, ten o'clock at night--but I forget you know all the bells--the carpenter reported a foot of water in the hold. Then began the heart-breaking business of working the pumps. All night long I heard the weary clank, clank, under-running, as it were, the yelling of the wind, the roaring of the sea, and the groaning of the stricken ship.

At daylight the gale broke, and a few hours later there was only a gigantic swell to tell the story of the storm. But the _Ellen Burgee_ had received her death warrant. She was slowly filling under us in spite of all that we could do. The Captain gave orders to prepare to abandon ship. The crew was at work at this when a new idea seemed to strike the skipper.

"'We can't be many miles from St. Paul's Rocks,' he said; and he set to work to make some calculations. The result was that a man was sent to the masthead to look for the rocks, sail was made on the ship, and the pumps were manned again. St. Paul's Rocks, you must know, are a small cl.u.s.ter of rocky projections, rising at the highest point about sixty feet above the sea. They are in lat.i.tude 56' N., longitude 29 20' W., and our old man figured that we weren't over fifteen miles away from them. Half an hour later the masthead lookout sighted the rocks, and a little later we sighted them from the decks.

"'My idea is,' said the Captain to the mate, 'to run the ship on the rocks. That will enable us to save all our dunnage and all the boats, and give us a breathing-spell to decide what's the next best move.'

"The mate agreed that it was a great scheme. The Captain went aloft to pick out a place to run the ship ash.o.r.e. He found a good spot where her bow would wedge up on the rocks, so that she would not slip off and sink, and he headed her for it. She struck pretty hard, and the foretop-gallant-mast went by the board, taking the flying jib-boom along with it; but we did not mind that, for we found that the ship had taken the ground for nearly half her length, and was in what you might call a mighty comfortable berth for a sinking craft. Two of our boats were smashed by the falling spars, but the long-boat was all right, and that was what the Captain counted on to take us off the rocks.

"Now the nearest land to St. Paul's Rocks is the north-eastern extremity of Brazil, Cape St. Roque, and that's something over 500 good sea miles away. I was only a small boy, but I had sense enough to know that a voyage of that length in a ship's boat would be a desperate undertaking, and even if successful, sure to embrace terrible hardship and exposure.

The Captain and the mate knew it, too, and they decided to remain right where they were for a few days on the chance of sighting a pa.s.sing ship.

That was a mighty poor chance, too, for very few vessels pa.s.s within sighting distance of St. Paul's Rocks. The great circle track from England to the Cape of Good Hope lies between fifty and sixty miles to the westward of them, and vessels are more likely to deviate to the westward of the track than to the eastward. Every sensible navigator gives those rocks a wide berth, anyhow. It was when I heard the Captain and the mate talking those matters over that I conceived my great fire-balloon scheme. I didn't say a word, but fished out a lot of stout wire that was aboard the ship, got my stock of tissue paper together, and set about making one of the biggest fire-balloons on record. It was a whopper, and no mistake, for, you see, I wanted it to have carrying and travelling power. When I had it finished, I secured a stout bottle.

Then I wrote this brief and direct message on a piece of brown paper:

"'The ship _Ellen Burgee_ is on St. Paul's Rocks. All hands safe and well, but would like to get away.'

"I put that in the bottle and corked it up tight. Then with a stiff piece of wire and a square of red bunting I made a flag, which I stuck up on top of the cork. Next I made a wire bridle, and swung the bottle below the neck of the balloon, so far down that the flag could not catch fire. I ballasted the bottom of the bottle first, and experimented with it so that it would float upright, even with the weight of wire hanging to it. The Captain saw me at work, and said,

"'What are you up to, Elias?'

"'Oh,' I said, 'I'm getting up a balloon ascension to kill time.'

"That night, as luck would have it, there was a nice gentle southeasterly breeze, and I made ready to send up my balloon. The Captain and the crew gathered around me and chaffed me a little, but I didn't mind that.

"'What's the bottle for?' asked the mate.

"'Just for a sort of ballast,' I answered.

"'What do you have the flag for?' asked one of the men.

"'Oh, for instance,' I answered, in school-boy fashion.

"I now lighted the flare in the neck of my balloon, and had the pleasure of seeing my contrivance slowly but surely inflated with the heated air.

In good time it was ready to rise, and as I released it, to my intense satisfaction it gently rose toward the sky, carrying the bottle with it.

"'Hooray for the Fourth o' July!' cried one of the sailors, and the crew gave three hearty cheers.

"Then they all stood about, watching it as it soared away into the nor'west like a comet.

"'If some ship sights that thing,' said one old fellow, 'she'll think a picnic has got lost.'

"'By the great hook block!' exclaimed the mate, 'maybe they'll hunt around and find us.'

"'If that should happen,' said the Captain, 'it would turn out that your sport paid, Elias.'

"'Yes, sir,' said I, smiling, and rubbing my hands behind my back.

"Well, we're pretty near the end of this yarn now, gentlemen. I watched that fire-balloon till it faded out of sight in the nor'west, and then I turned in and dreamed all night about ships picking up bottles with messages in them, and saving shipwrecked crews. And the next day I did nothing but go aloft and look for a sail, but not one hove in sight. The following day I did the same thing, and that night I think I cried a little because no vessel appeared. On the third day I didn't go aloft till after breakfast, and then I nearly burst my lungs screaming, 'Sail ho!' Sure enough, there was a vessel about twenty miles off to the nor'west. The Captain had a big fire started on the rocks, and sent a good column of smoke into the air. The vessel rose, and in a couple of hours we saw plainly that she was heading right for us. Maybe we didn't all dance for joy! In another hour she hove to abreast of the rocks and sent a boat. The officer in charge of it stepped out, and holding up my bottle with a tangled ma.s.s of wire and pulp, said,

"'How did you get this thing out there?'

"'Out where?' demanded our Captain.

"'We picked it up forty miles nor'west of you.'

"'Hurrah for my fire-balloon!' I cried. 'And was the message all right?'

"'Of course. Ain't we here?'

"And he handed my message to our Captain, who threw his arms around me, and exclaimed:

"'You little angel! You'll be a sailor yourself some day.'

"And sure enough," said Captain Elias Joyce, rising from the table, "he told the living truth."