The Flying Bo'sun Part 21

It was while she cleared herself from the sea that carried away the Captain's boat that I found Riley twisted around the spanker sheet like an eel. It took him some time to extricate himself, always watching the progress of the stern sea, and not seeming to notice his number ten brogans, which had woven themselves into the spanker-sheet falls. The hurricane was raising havoc with Riley's mustache. Having blown all over his face, it looked as if the only way to quiet it would be to put it into a plaster of Paris cast. He finally pulled himself clear of the sheet, exclaiming:

"Be Hivins, and wasn't that a close call--"

Just then Swanson came running aft and reported that the martingale guy had carried away on the flying-jibboom. It was then that my heart sank within me. I knew what to expect. Dismantled,--then to perish at sea!

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE MASTER RETURNS

The thought of our dead captain came to me, of what his will would have been in this crisis of life and death, and I paused to wonder why he had not rested until he was a.s.sured that I would not carry his precious treasures back with me. Did he expect this situation, and doubt my ability to cope with it? Action followed thought, and I ordered the second mate and the crew forward to see what could be done with the martingale guy.

Still the humor of the moment appealed to me. As Riley left the p.o.o.p he shouted, "Be the Holy St. Patrick, it has blown the b.u.t.tons off me oilskin coat." There was no question about its blowing, but it was also possible that his snakelike position on the spanker-sheet had something to do with the lost b.u.t.tons.

It was now past noon. None of the crew cared to eat, preferring the wave-swept deck to anything the cook had to offer. The murderer who pays for his crime on the gallows and enjoys his ham and eggs on the morn of execution may be happy indeed, but this does not apply to the sailor. When there is a life and death battle on with the elements, he is there to grab the one last chance if there be one. If not, he prefers a watery grave to claim him with his stomach empty.

The seas kept coming larger, and every time one would break and spend itself on the decks I thought it would be the last, and that she could not arise. But she shook herself clear as she climbed the waves; then again the sea, and again the dread.

I could not leave the p.o.o.p nor the two men at the wheel. A wrong turn at this howling, raging time, would mean quick despatch to the land of no awakening. Sometimes even the helmsmen grew afraid, but a word of encouragement sufficed to quiet them.

While I was standing to windward of the men at the wheel, watching her every move as she was pitched hither and thither on this crazy spiral sea, she shipped a green sea that shook her from stem to stern. It was with great difficulty that she raised her black hull to the raging storm again. I shouted to the men at the wheel. It was too late. She had broached to with the stern sea on the beam, and the beam sea right ahead.

Then the beam sea submerged her, and by it I was carried across the p.o.o.p deck, and found myself held under the wheel-box, with both legs pinned in a vise-like grip by the tiller, which extended forward of the rudder-head. Although dazed and strangled by the terrible impact of the water, I managed to twist the upper part of my body towards the wheel and to murmur, "For G.o.d's sake keep her off."

My weakened voice was lost in the tempest. There were no ears to hear my pleadings. The men at the wheel were gone. Gone, indeed, to a watery grave, and perhaps the others also. With me it would not take long. Just another raking like the last one, and then the finish. Again the cook's words echoed louder than the raging storm, "Do we finish here?"

As I lay there pinned to the deck, too helpless to even call aloud, and as it seemed waiting, waiting, for the executioner to spring the deadly trap, I was conscious that the door of the companion-way had closed with a bang so terrific that it sounded above the storm. I twisted my head and shoulders around to see if I dared to hope. There before me stood the Hindoo stowaway. He did not notice me lying there pinned under the wheel-box, nor could I manage to attract his attention.

With opal eyes glowing green and fiery red, he sprang to the wheel, and with magnificent strength pulled on the spokes till they screeched louder than the storm as they were dislodged from their oxidized fittings. Harder and harder he pulled on the wheel. He didn't even notice the seas breaking over him. The mysterious thing about him was that he seemed to know what he was doing. He was keeping her off before it.

In doing this he removed the tiller from my legs. At last I was free. As I struggled and crawled to the weather-rail for support, the Hindoo shouted in clear and ringing tones, in true seamanlike fashion, looking neither to the right nor left, but straight ahead, as if staring into a land-locked harbor. He repeated his order for the second time in a high tenor voice:

"Get an axe out of the donkey-room and cut away the lee martingale guy.

Your flying-jibboom is gone overboard and is still held by the lee guy.

It is plowing a hole in the port bow."

I knew but one law. The law of self-preservation. My arms were locked tight around the stanchion that supported the weather-rail. That quick command of the Hindoo brought me sharply to the realization that I was not yet given that quick despatch to the land of nowhere, but was still in the flesh, and very much alive. My first rational thought was, "What in h.e.l.l is the Hindoo doing at the wheel?" My pride as a sailor resented the affront put upon my ability as a sailor by a stowaway who was daring to a.s.sume the command of my ship, and daring to issue orders to me.

Letting go my hold on the stanchion, I cautiously made for the Hindoo helmsman. While in the act, she shipped another drencher. I was carried off my feet and washed away to the lee scuppers. But I managed, by some interposition of Divine Providence, to fasten my arms around the mooring-bitt, thus saving myself from an angry and cruel sea, which seemed to delight in playing with me as a cat does with a mouse, only to swallow me up in its fathomless depths.

Once again she wrenched herself free of the mad swirl and her stern went down until we were in a valley between mountains of water. I realized as I looked up at the bows which seemed to be towering above me, that the flying-jibboom, like a clipped wing, was missing. Like a flash I wondered how the Hindoo knew that the jibboom was gone.

As her stern ascended high into the air, I jumped for the wheel and with an exclamation of joy I shouted, "G.o.d in Heaven, the Captain!"

There he stood beside the Hindoo. The dead Captain. The same heavy mustache covered the lower lip. The same fiery eyes that knew no defeat.

He was looking straight ahead with muscle-set jaws. He appeared as if in the flesh and ready as of yore to battle with the elements.

Then, like a flash, he vanished, and the Hindoo stood alone, pulling and tugging on the wheel with his supple arms.

He spoke, and his usually high-pitched tenor voice rang out piercingly clear. "Cut away your jibboom, you have no time to lose. Have no fear."

I knew that her former Captain was in command of the ship, and that his masterly seamanship wrought through the Hindoo. I crept forward with new courage to do his bidding.

Huddled together beneath the forecastle-head stood what remained of the crew, who seemed not to know that two of their number were gone. The second mate was praying, and helpless from fear to be of any use in handling the schooner. Riley had his three-inch sailor's rope fast to the windla.s.s with one extra turn around his body. He was taking no chances. Swanson was the only one without fear. When I called for a volunteer to cut away the flying jibboom he made for the axe and rushed onto the sea-swept forecastle-head. As the schooner arose high in the air, he swung over the lee bow and with one stroke of the axe cut away the hemp lanyard that was holding the ma.s.sive spar from its freedom.

For five hours more we battled with the hurricane. The foretopmast went overboard, and all our boats were smashed into firewood. The lee bulwarks, between the mizzen and mainmast, were washed away, and still the Hindoo held the wheel and issued his orders. Many times I offered to take the wheel, and ordered him to go below. He would wave me away with his hand, saying:

"Not yet,--soon, soon."

About six o'clock, twelve hours and a half after the hurricane struck us, the wind let up some. We then went to work with a will to patch up what was left of the "Wampa," and for the first time since half-past five o'clock that morning, we realized how hungry we were. It was while giving orders to the cook that I looked towards the wheel and saw that the Hindoo was missing.

Calling Swanson to take the wheel as I ran, I rushed to find him. There by the wheel he lay, where he had fallen, limp as a rag,--unconscious.

Gathering him easily into my arms, I carried him to the Captain's room, laying him in the bunk as carefully as if he were a babe newborn. For two hours we worked over him, the crew unchidden tiptoeing back and forth in clumsy ministrations, the Socialist cook refusing to leave him. As he finally came back to earth from those astral regions he so easily frequented, a sigh of relief, almost hysterical, went up from the whole ship. Surely there had been enough of tragedy!

Along about eight o'clock the wind fell very light. As there was still a heavy swell running, it would be dangerous to put sail on her for she would shake it into threads.

While walking up and down the p.o.o.p deck I could hear Riley and the cook working over the stowaway. My thoughts turned to old Charlie and to Dago Joe, who were sleeping their last sleep out there at sea. Had it not been for Him, for Him who had loved his ship, we would all have shared the same merciless fate. What might have happened had I followed my first impulse to cast the Hindoo overboard?

The cook came running up the companion-way very much excited, and said "Come down quick, the Hindoo is showing signs of life." In the Captain's room, under the sickly and only lamp, the frail body was moving from side to side, sometimes making a feeble effort to sit up, often swinging his arms as if to ward off some impending danger. Then he asked for a drink of water and gradually became rational.

When I told him what a wonderful service he had performed, he smiled and said, "Surely you can't mean me." I insisted, telling him in detail how, when two men had been washed overboard, he had seized the wheel and saved the ship. "You must be mistaken," he protested, "I have not been on deck, and I cannot steer, I know nothing whatever about a ship as a sailor. But I have just awakened from a dream that was worse than your Christian h.e.l.l."

CHAPTER XXIX

THE HOME PORT

"The wind is from the south-southeast, sir," sang out Swanson from the wheel. Riley gave voice to my impulse when he said, "Thank G.o.d, it is the southeast trades again, sir."

The days that followed brought us fine weather and a gentle breeze. We were fortunate enough to escape the doldrums. The southeast trades carried us into the northeast trade winds. In lat.i.tude 30 north we struck the westerly winds that blow fair for the Pacific coast of the U.

S. A. Fifty-six days from Suva we rounded Lime Point, sailed up Fris...o...b..y, and dropped the hook off Goat Island.

The owner welcomed me at his office, and was pleased indeed to know that his favorite schooner was once again in her home port.

Later, when we were towed alongside the wharf, the good ship "Wampa" was the object of much speculation among the old hard-sh.e.l.led water-front men, not so much from her battered condition, although she was minus port bulwarks, foretopmast and flying jibboom, as from some air of mystery which in a conscious way seemed to emanate from the very hull of her. Veterans of the deep who were in port loading new cargoes, would come and go, walking in silence like pallbearers.

Possibly this was due to the appearance of the Hindoo stowaway, or it may have been that the occult voyage of the "Wampa" had been aired in Rooney's Steam Beer Joint which was at the end of the wharf. Yet with all this hushed solemnity, I do believe that it was I who most sincerely mourned our Captain and the two honest, simple sailormen whose lives had been so unprotestingly given to their duty. Many a voyage have I had since then, but at no time have I ever felt at once so near to Humanity, and to the Infinite. The Hindoo, who had picked up and grown fat on the cook's pea-soup and salt-horse, went to a home which I found for him with a hotel man, who advanced the entry-fee, and put him to work as a porter. He saved his money and, after familiarizing himself with the customs and conventions of the Western people, he moved north to the State of Oregon, where he went into the real estate business, acquiring, up to eight years ago, a goodly sum of money.

The Socialist cook exchanged his greasy dungarees for a pair of hand-me-down creaseless serge pants. With these and a much-worn broadcloth coat that had long withstood gales from the critics of equal distribution, he entered once more the harness of Socialism. With him he took Toby, the black cat, to a life ash.o.r.e. I believe, though, that his voyage on the "Wampa" had changed his materialistic ideas.

Riley swore that he had made his last trip on windjammers, but that should necessity compel him to take again to the sea, he would sail in a gentleman's yacht. There he would be sure of frequent home ports, each with its black-eyed Susan reigning supreme. But conditions were not as Riley had planned. The steam beer was as plentiful as ever, but the dinero was running low, and he had to take the first thing that offered that would reef and steer. Since then I have met him many times.

Swanson, the most daring and best sailor of the "Wampa's" crew, went to a navigation school in San Francisco. With his second mate's papers he put off on a long Southern voyage, and after a few years he became captain.