Harry Milvaine Part 28

Everybody thanked the doctor for his story, and now, as it was wearing late, as they had pa.s.sed--

"The wee short hour ayout the twal."

Good-nights were said, and hands were shaken, and in half an hour all but those on watch were sound asleep or dreaming of their far-off homes.

The southern stars were very bright; there was not a sound to be heard save the lapping of the waves at the ship's side, the far-off beating of the eternal tom-toms, or the occasional shrill shriek of an Arab sentinel walking his rounds within the palace walls.

Book 2--CHAPTER SEVEN.

CAUGHT ABACK IN A WHITE SQUALL--ON A REEF IN MID OCEAN--THE LOST DHOW.

The _Bunting_ had orders to take dispatches for the East India station before bearing up for England by way of the Cape, for the Suez Ca.n.a.l was not yet open.

To be sure they would much have preferred to turn southwards at once.

But after all a month or so more could make but little difference after so long a commission--they had been away from England now nearly five long years.

On the very next day, however, after the dinner-party, steam was got up, and the _Bunting_ departed from Zanzibar.

How merrily the men worked now! How cheerfully they sang! Everybody seemed in better temper than his neighbour. For were they not, virtually speaking, homeward bound.

"If we do happen to come across another prize you know," said Captain Wayland to Mr Dewar, "we won't say no to her, will we?"

"That we won't, sir," was the laughing reply; "the more the merrier, and it won't be my fault if a good outlook isn't kept both by night and day."

Sailors love the sea, and quite delight, as the old song tells us, in--

"A wet sheet and a flowing sail."

But there are times when even a sailor may feel weary on the ocean. My experience leads me to believe that so long as a ship is positively doing something, and going somewhere in particular, Jack-a-tar is perfectly contented and happy. In such a case--a sailing ship on a long voyage, for example--if the wind blows dead ahead, dead in the good chip's eye, Jack may feel thrown back a bit in his reckoning, but he eats and sleeps and doesn't say much, he has got to work to windward, and this brings out all the craft's good sailing capacity. If it blows a gale in a wrong direction--well, she is laid to, and however rough the weather be, Jack comforts himself and his mates with the a.s.surance that it can't go on blowing in the same direction for ever. Neither it does; and no sooner is the vessel lying her course again, with her stem cleaving through the blue water, than Jack begins to sing, like a blackbird just let loose from a pie.

If the ship gets caught in a tornado, then there is so much to do that there is really no time for grumbling.

But what Jack can _not_ stand, with anything like equanimity, is inaction. Being in the doldrums, for instance, on or about the line.

"As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean."

In such a case Jack does growl, and, in my humble opinion, no one has a better right to do so.

The day after that joyful evening described in last chapter, when, by this time, the men had not only read their letters o'er and o'er, but had almost got them by heart, as the long row of white palatial-looking buildings that forms the frontage of that strange city, Zanzibar, was left behind, and the greenery of trees was presently lost to view, the men's spirits grew buoyant indeed. For fires were now ordered to be banked, as a breeze sprang up--quickly, too, as breezes are wont to in these lat.i.tudes.

Sail was set, pretty close hauled she had to be, but away went the _Bunting_ nevertheless, cutting through the bright sparkling water like a knife. It was a wind to make the heart of a true sailor jump for joy.

It cut the pyramidal heads of the waves off, and the spray so formed glittered in the sunshine like showers of molten silver; it sang rather than roared through the rigging, it kept the vane extended like a railway signal arm, it kept the pennant in a constant state of flutter, it kept the sails all full and free from wrinkle, and every sheet as taut as a fiddle-string. It was a "ripping" breeze, a happy bracing breeze, a breeze that gave one strength of nerve and muscle, and light and joy of mind.

The officers were all on deck, from the captain to the clerk, walking rapidly up and down as if doing a record or winning a bet.

The breeze continued for days till, indeed, the ship was degrees north of the line.

But one lovely night, with a clear sky and the moon shimmering on the wave crests, and dyeing the water with streaks like molten gold, it fell calm. The wind went away as suddenly almost as it had sprung up.

There were men in the chains. Every now and then their voices rang up from near the bows in that mournful kind of chant that none can forget who have ever heard it "And a half fi--ive."

"And a quarter less six." And so on. They had just come over an ugly bit of shoal water, and from the mast-head, where Harry himself--it was his watch--had gone to view the situation, he could notice that there were patches of the same kind of coral shoals almost everywhere around.

It was an ugly situation. He could not help wishing that the wind had continued but a little longer, or that it would again spring up from the same quarter. But there were the sails flapping sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, and taking desperate pulls and jerks at the sheets, causing the _Bunting_ to kick about in a manner that was far from agreeable.

Harry was just about to order sail to be taken in, for he knew not in what direction the wind would come from.

He had already taken the liberty of rousing the sleeping engineer, and telling him to get up steam with all possible speed.

"Hands, shorten sail!"

"Ready about."

For the wind seemed now commencing to blow from off the land.

He ran up to the maintop once more to take a view of the situation.

Heavens! what was coming yonder? Away on the horizon a long bank of snow-white fog or foam, high as poplar trees it seemed; and as he listened for a moment spellbound, he could hear a distant roar like that which breakers make on a sandy beach on a windless, frosty night in winter, only more continuous. It was the scourge of the Indian Ocean.

It was the dreaded white squall.

It came on in foam and fury, lightning even playing athwart and behind it.

"All hands on deck!" roared Harry. In his excitement he hardly knew what he was saying. "Stand by to let go everything! Hard a port!"

Everything indeed! Hardly had he spoken ere the squall was on them, the wind roaring like a den of wild beasts, the sea around them like a maelstrom, ropes snapped like worsted threads, sails in ribbons, and rattling like platoon fire, blocks adrift, sheets streaming like pennants, and the canvas that held out-bellying to the dreadful blast and carrying the vessel astern at the rate of knots.

Caught aback in a white squall! no situation can be more dangerous or appalling! Well for them was it that the _Bunting_ was long and low and rakish; a brig would have gone down stern first, giving those on board hardly time to utter a prayer.

For five long minutes astern she sped. Two men were knocked down dangerously wounded, and washed into the lee scuppers, where they would have been drowned, but for the almost superhuman exertions of the surgeon and steward.

Five long minutes, but see, good seamanship has triumphed! She is round at last, all sail off that could be got off. She is scudding almost under bare poles--scudding whither?

Scudding straight apparently to destruction. Through the mist and the rain that swallows the moonlight, they cannot make out a reef that lies right ahead of them, till she is on it, till she rasps and b.u.mps, till every man is thrown flat on deck, and the man pitched over the wheel.

It is all up with the _Bunting_!

Ah! many a half-despairing prayer went heavenward then, many a half-smothered cry for mercy from Him to whom all things are possible, and who holds the sea in the hollow of His hand.

Bending over his bleeding patients down below in the steerage, the doctor never ceases his work, albeit the ship has struck, and the seas are making a clear breach over, albeit he is up to the ankles in the water that is pouring down green through the hatchway.

The steward is frantic.

Little Raggy in the captain's cabin, to whom Harry himself had taken pains to teach the things of a better life and a better world, is on his knees.

"O! big Fader in heaven," he is saying, "don't let de ship sinkee for true. Dis chile no want to die to-night. De waves make plenty much bobbery, de masts dey break and fall. Take us out ob de gulp (gulph).

Lor, take us out ob de gulp, and save us for true."

It is all up with the _Bunting_, is it?