The White Squall Part 30

"Lads," cried Captain Miles when he had finished reading the service and the body had disappeared below the surface of the restless sea, "you can go and turn in now, all that like. Mind, you have a good caulk until early to-morrow morning, when you'll have to rouse out sharp, all hands, for there be lots to be done!"

We who were on the p.o.o.p also went below soon afterwards to the cabin, where we found that Jake had cleared out all the debris and arranged the place so neatly that one would scarcely have imagined it had ever been in the state of confusion we noticed when first entering it.

Our bunks, too, were all arranged comfortably, with dry blankets spread in each; and I know that I, for one, was so glad to lie down on anything like a bed again after the two nights' exposure outside the ship, that I dropped off to sleep the moment I turned into my cot--the remark the captain had made about our being now thirteen in number, or a "baker's dozen," running in my head as a refrain to my dreams, although my rest was not in any way disturbed. The baker's dozen, however, made me think of bread on my waking up in the morning; for, I felt more hungry then than on the previous day, when the first morsel of food I tasted almost choked me.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

WE BEAT UP FOR THE AZORES.

It was early dawn when the unwonted sound of feet bustling about over my head on the deck, which I had not heard now it seemed for an unconscionable length of time, roused me up to the realisation of our having at last been relieved from our terrible peril and the privations we had suffered whilst the ship was on her beam-ends.

Oh, what joy it was to think we were all safe on board the _Josephine_ again!

Hunger, one of the most painful of the sufferings we had experienced, and indeed the one which I felt the most of any, was now banished completely to the realms of the past; and I had presently trustworthy evidence of this, Jake appearing at the door of my cabin and bringing in a steaming bowl of coffee and some biscuits, as a sort of "little breakfast" before the larger and more substantial meal was ready--the galley being already fixed up properly and Cuffee having resumed his culinary duties with all his paraphernalia in train.

When I got out on the p.o.o.p, I noticed that the hands had not been idle while I was sleeping, so much already having been accomplished in the way of restoring the ship to an effective condition that the men must have set to work long before daylight, I was certain.

Moggridge was just going down the p.o.o.p-ladder as I mounted it, on his way forward to execute some order Captain Miles had given him.

"Fine morning, Master Tom," he said.

"It is," I responded, "a regular jolly one; but, how busy you all are!"

"Aye, aye, young master, we can't afford to wait when there's so much to be done and so precious little time to do it in."

And then he was off in a jiffey.

Captain Miles was sitting on the port bulwarks, which were intact, polishing up his s.e.xtant.

"Good morning, captain," I said.

"Morning," he answered absently, so much engrossed with one of the eye- pieces of the instrument that he couldn't even look up.

I felt like the idle little boy in the story-book, who went and asked, first, the horse to play with him, and then, when that sagacious animal refused to accede to his request, on the plea of having his master's business to attend to, he tried to induce various other quadrupeds to come and amuse him, only to meet with a constant refusal--the idle boy having in the end to go to work himself, finding idleness, without companions to share it, the reverse of pleasure.

Everybody on board seemed too much engrossed with some task in hand to attend to me; even Jake, when I went below again, could hardly spare me a word, for he was intent on polishing up the saloon table again, trying to efface the effects of its long immersion in the water from the surface of the mahogany--a somewhat vain task, I may add, as the wood never recovered its original tone.

I then went forwards, only to see the men there working like bees. Not a soul even raised his head to glance at me as I pa.s.sed by.

Adze, the carpenter, was up to his ears in the pump casing, which he had fixed again over the well amidships, after first taking out the valves and fitting new suckers to them. Cuffee, too, was blowing away at the galley fire till his black face looked like that of a red Indian; and, as for Mr Marline, he was in his element, as he always was when overseeing anything connected with the rigging of the ship, enjoying himself to his heart's content in setting up a jury-mast to take the place of our broken foremast. He had made the men lash the topmast and topgallant-mast to the fragment left of the original spar, securing it with back-stays and preventers on the port and starboard sides before getting up the shrouds. These latter, of course, would have now to be reduced, in order to suit the diminished height of the new mast, whereon the topsail-yard would have to do duty for the old fore-yard, and the topgallant one be transferred into a topsail-yard.

Mr Marline seemed rather proud of his handiwork; so, this made him more conversational than anyone I had yet tried to talk to.

"Ha, Tom," he said, "you're just in time to see us cross our yards again--not a bad job, eh?"

"No, sir," I replied; "have you been long over it?"

"Ever since daylight."

"And have all of you been equally busy?" I asked.

"Bless you, yes! As for Cuffee, he roused out poor Moggridge early in the middle watch, to help him to fix the galley, bribing him with the promise of some hot coffee. That started the hands; for, the boatswain must needs hail Adze to see after the pumps, and hearing them stirring about, I came on deck and employed the idlers in getting the spars alongside, as the sea was as calm as a pond. Then, I set them to work unreeving the gear and making things snug for setting up our jury-masts, of which this is the first--a downright seamanlike piece of work I call it."

"So it is, sir," said I to please him, seeing him looking up at the new foremast admiringly; "and, I suppose, Mr Marline, when you've finished rigging this, you'll begin setting up a new mainmast."

"Aye, my boy, and a mizzen too after that! You shall see the old barquey spreading her canvas bravely again before I have done with her."

Presently, Adze called out that he had made the pumps act at last.

This brought down Captain Miles from the p.o.o.p; when, a party of the sailors at once setting to work, the bilge-water soon rose from below and flowed in a stream in the scuppers.

Half an hour's spell served to make the pumps suck dry, showing that the main hold of the ship was clear; and, seeing this, the captain turned round and hailed Mr Marline with a triumphant shout.

"There, Marline," he cried, "what do you think of that, eh? Who was right and who was wrong?"

"Well, sir, you were a true prophet this time," replied the first mate equally well pleased at the result, although it went against his own prognostication; "I only hope you'll get the fore-peak free as easily; for, then, we'll float on an even keel."

"All right, my boy, so we will," said Captain Miles; and he then ordered the hands to bend the end of the hose down into the forepart of the ship below that part of the forecastle where the men bunked, the other end of the hose being attached to the pump cylinder.

This job was a heavier one than that of clearing the main hold, the men having to be relieved in spells; but, after several hours' hard work, the bows of the ship were sensibly lightened of the extra water ballast we had carried here, and by the afternoon this part of the vessel was also clear.

Meanwhile, however, Jake had announced that breakfast was ready and on the cabin table. This was the first hot meal we had had the chance of partaking of now for four days, and it may be imagined with what gusto we all enjoyed it I should add that, Captain Miles, liking good living himself, took care that the men all round had an equally good spread, sharing his own private stores liberally, so that those in the forecastle fared as sumptuously as we did.

The captain did this out of his own innate good nature; but, had he been generous merely as an act of policy, it could not have served him in better stead, the sailors working all the afternoon and far into the night with all the greater willingness in setting the ship to rights as a return for the kindness he had displayed. None wanted driving to make them stick to their several tasks.

Mr Marline had believed that when the fore-peak was clear of water the _Josephine_, which until then had her bows almost level with the sea, would have recovered her proper floatation; but, although her head now rose, she displayed a decided list to starboard that became the more apparent as her head became elevated more and more.

"Some of the cargo must have shifted," said Captain Miles; and with him, true sailor as he was, to discover a fault was to suggest a remedy.

"We must take off the battens of the main hatch," he cried. "Mr Marline, stop rigging those sticks for a bit. It is far more important for our stowage to be true before we take any more of the heavy spars on board; for, if we meet with any bad weather, we may turn the turtle again and not come out of it so cleverly as we managed on the first occasion!"

"All right, sir," replied the mate, ordering the hands under his orders on the forecastle to move aft, where, under the captain's directions, the hatches were taken off and the cargo exposed to view.

A pair of shears were then rigged up over the hold, on which a running tackle with blocks and falls was rigged; when, after several puncheons of rum had been hoisted out, it was found that the lover tier of the cargo had lurched over at the time the ship careened.

It took many hours to alter the arrangement of the sugar casks below, the rum having to be all hoisted on deck first; but, the hands working zealously, the job was at last accomplished, the ship soon afterwards righting properly, with her deck now horizontal to the plane of the water instead of being at an angle with it as before.

The puncheons of rum were then again lowered down and stowed securely and the hatches put on again. The men after this ceased their toils for the day, it being close on to sunset.

On the third day, the rigging of the jury foremast was completed and the head-gear all attached to it, new sails being bent to the yards in the place of those that had been blown away. Fresh halliards and running ropes were also rove, so that on an emergency, if the wind arose suddenly, we could have made sail on the one mast, and thus made a shift of battling with the elements.

Fortunately, however, the weather remained beautifully calm, only a slight breeze springing up for a short time during the first hours of the morning watch. The light wind had hardly sufficient power to give motion to the bull of the vessel, and so the task of setting up the other masts and rigging was satisfactorily proceeded with.

The mainmast caused the greatest trouble, the remains of the heel having first to be taken out; although Mr Marline luckily thought of this when we were re-stowing the cargo on the previous day. Otherwise, we would have had a second sorting out of the contents of the hold.

The shears used for raising the rum puncheons not being strong enough to lift the mainmast, which was a very heavy piece of timber weighing several hundredweights, the main and fore-yards, with the mizzen topmast, were set up as a triangle over the place where the spar had to be stepped--the ends of the yards being fixed firmly against the bulwarks on either side and lashed together at the top. This "crab" was then raised in the air by a tackle and purchase, the falls of which were brought to the capstan and run up by the crew as if they were weighing anchor.