Chapter III: Part 3

The _Jehu_ heeled over under the blow until the rail of her starboard bulwarks was flush with the water. The men came skurrying, half-naked, out of the forecastle, thinking she was sinking, and rushed aft to be out of the way of whatever might tumble down from aloft. You heard the grinding noise of crushed wood; the thud of falling gear, the tearing of canvas. The weight of the barque, that was a big vessel in ballast, swept the stern of the little _Jehu_ to windward, rounding her in such a manner as to free them both. But by this time there was plenty of noise and activity to be noted aboard the barque. Orders were rattled out in plain English, and you could hear the scampering of feet and the songs of the seamen as they ran to and fro and pulled and hauled. She heeled over like a great shadow with her mainyards square and her fore-sheets flattened in. It was impossible to know what mischief she had done; and, running to the side, Mr. Whitear shouted to her at the top of his voice to stand by them, as he feared the schooner was sinking.

No answer was returned.

“They’re leaving us!” cried the mate. “Look! they’re trimming sail; they’re swinging the mainyards!”

Again Mr. Whitear bawled to them not to abandon the schooner; but no answer was vouchsafed, and in a few moments it was not only seen that she was leaving them, but that she meant to get away as fast as she could, for they loosed their fore topgallant-sail and main-royal, and sheeted the canvas home with all expedition.

Under such circumstances most men would have contented themselves with bestowing a sea-blessing on the stranger, and then turned-to to sound the well, and, if the schooner was leaking fast, get the boats over. But Mr. John Whitear was made of the old, and, as some people might think, the right kind of stuff.

“Bill,” says he to William Dart, A.B., who was at the wheel, “keep your eye upon that old catermerang while me and the mate overhauls the schooner. Follow her without a wink, William; for if there’s a creak left in this old bucket, we’ll stick to her skirts and have her name, though she should go all on sailing till we comes to Australey.”

Forthwith he and the mate went to work, sounded the well, looked over the side, peered at the damage done aloft; and then, coming aft again, “She’s tight and she’s right, boys,” said Mr. Whitear. “Now, bullies, here’s a mess that’s to cost some one pounds and pounds. That some one’s not to be John Whitear; so, William, starboard your helm, my lad; and the rest of ye all turn to and make sail forrard, every stitch ye can find, and then we’ll repair the main rigging, and get a new mainsail bent;” for he had discovered that the barque’s jibboom had cut through the centre cloths of the mainsail, ripping it open from the head to the second reef-band as neatly as if a sailmaker’s knife had done the job.

They all went to work with a will, putting uncommon agility into their limbs and spirits by calling the shadow ahead many hard salt names, and swearing they would catch her if she carried them into the Polar regions. The labour was severe, for there were not many of them to “turn-to;” nevertheless, they managed, in a time less by three-quarters than they would have occupied on any other occasion, to repair the damaged shrouds, set up preventer backstays, bend a new mainsail, and cover the little vessel with canvas. The barque was close-hauled, three or four miles ahead, on the port tack, lying over, as a light vessel will in such a merry breeze as was then blowing, under both royals and gaff topsail; she was trusting to her heels and running away, like a big bully from a little man whom he has accidentally hurt, and is afraid of. Her people would probably ridicule the idea of the deep-freighted schooner chasing them; indeed, they had left her apparently helpless, her port main rigging hanging in bights over the side, her mainsail in halves, and the whole fabric looking wrecked and stunned from the shock of the collision.

Meanwhile, Mr. John Whitear stumped the quarter-deck of his little craft, often pausing to point an old leather-covered telescope at the leaning shadow out away under the low-shining stars just the merest trifle to leeward of the lee knighthead, and then cocking the glass under his arm afresh, and swinging round with a sharp, obstinate stamp of the foot to resume his walk.

“Boys,” he sung out, “there’s no occasion for the Watch below to remain on deck.”

“No, no,” was the gruff answer; “there’s no going below till we’ve found out that wessel’s name.”

The wind came along with a fresh, strong sweep, and a deep moan in the gusts as they blew over the bulwark rail into the hollow glimmer of the great mainsail; there was a kind of flashful light in the breaking heads of the little black surges, and a regular rise and fall of fountain-like sound from forward, where the stem of the driven schooner was hissing through the dark water, and the wake ran away astern like a snow-covered road, until, looking at it, you seemed to see the dark water on either side stand up as if the white vein were the frothing stream of a cataract rushing into darkness betwixt the shadows of hills.

“Why, smother me, if she’s not got the scent of us!” suddenly cried Mr. Whitear with the glass at his eye; “she’s off three points, and there’s no luff left in her! Boys, did any of you take notice if she had her stun-sail booms aloft?”

“No,” answered William Dart; “her foreyards were just up yonder” (pointing into the air), “an’ I’ll take my oath she’d got no booms on ’em.”

“Then we’ll run her down yet: we’ll have her!” cried Mr. Whitear, fetching his knee a slap that sounded like the report of a pistol. “Keep her away a bit; ease off the sheets fore and aft. Hurrah, my lads! the _Jehu_ knows the road! We’ll weather the sneak, boys!” And so he rattled on, sometimes talking to his men, sometimes to the schooner, and sometimes addressing the barque ahead.

Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, however, four or five sailing-vessels hove in sight and bothered Mr. Whitear exceedingly, for there was a chance mistaking the chase among them and pursuing the wrong vessel. All hands were implored to keep a bright look-out, and the glass was now much more often at the skipper’s eye than under his arm. It is strange enough to think of a little collier with 230 tons of coal in her bottom pursuing a vessel three times her size. It might really pass as a most satirical travestie of the old maritime business, were it not for the very strong commercial instincts at work in it. The purse was always as great a power on sea as on land, and the flight of the big barque from the little coalman was only another illustration of its supremacy.

To the great satisfaction of Mr. Whitear, the schooner turned out to be more than a match for the cowardly runaway. It was quite clear that the barque had no more sail to set; as it was, she was bowling along under a press of canvas that must have made her decks mighty uncomfortable, to judge from the sharp angle of her inclination. Had she chosen to put her helm up and bring the wind well aft, she would no doubt have walked away from the schooner, whose fore-and-aft canvas then would not have much helped her. But the barque could not forget that she had to work her way to windward, and that her port lay N.E. and not S.W.: and though she might slacken away her lee-braces in the hope of making the obstinate little schooner give up, it would not answer her purpose to do more than that.

Inch by inch the _Jehu_ crawled up to her. Just before daybreak the wind breezed up like a squall, though the sky was clear, and Mr. Whitear, who all through the night had watched the chase with the intentness of an old British commodore following a squadron of flying Frenchmen, shouted out that she had taken in her royals and gaff topsail, and that, as it was, she was nearly out of water to windward. But not so much as a rope-yarn was touched aboard the _Jehu_; she had never been so pressed since the hour that she was launched. She hove up the foam as high as the head-boards; every bone of her trembled; the wind boomed away from under the foot of her sails in a thunder-note, and the sheets and weather standing rigging stood like bars of iron. There seemed as much eagerness in her shivering, rushing frame as in her skipper, whose excitement deepened as the square and leaning shadow ahead loomed bigger and bigger. Earnestly was it to be hoped that the port main rigging would stand all this straining; and yet such was the temper of the captain and the men of the brave little _Jehu_, that, I believe, had the mainmast gone overboard, they would have held on after the barque with a single spar, just as I once saw a man with one arm and a wooden leg give chase to a rogue who had sneered at his misfortunes.

The faint grey of the dawn was in the sky when the barque was brought to the wind again, and, after holding on for a short while with a close luff, went about. Before she had her foreyards braced round, the schooner had stayed and was on the starboard tack, savagely breaking the quick seas which were rolling in the wake of the wind, and finding all the advantage she needed in the weathering she had made upon the barque, who, with the rising of the sun, appeared to lose all heart, for no more sail was made, and when she was braced up she was kept so close that the weather half of her fore topgallant-sail was aback. The white sunshine that had flung a deep blue over the stars, and transformed the ocean into a tumbling green surface full of sparkles and white lines, and a horizon so clear that it was like the sweep of a brush dipped in bright green paint along the enfolding azure of the morning sky, gave stout-hearted Mr. John Whitear a good sight of the tall vessel he had been chasing all through the middle and morning watches. She was what he called “a lump of a barque,” so light that half her metal sheathing was out of water, with very square yards and a main skysail mast, and she tumbled with such unwieldly motions upon the running seas that it seemed no longer wonderful that the _Jehu_ should have been able to weather and forereach upon her. Her way was almost stopped by the gripe of her luff, and within an hour of the time of her going about the schooner was on her weather quarter.

Mr. Whitear had already deciphered her name upon her stern, but he had some questions to ask; so, jumping on to the rail and clawing a backstay with one hand, whilst he put the other hand to his mouth, he bawled out, “Barque ahoy!”

“Hallo!” was the answer.

“What’s the name of your vessel?” sang out Mr. “Whitear.

“Have you forgotten how to read, skipper? It’s under your nose,” came the reply.

“You’re the barque _Juno_, of Maitland, N.S.--that’s clear enough on your starn,” shouted Mr. Whitear, whose temper, inflamed by the long pursuit, was not improved, as may be supposed, by this reception; “and you’re the vessel that ran into us last night, and carried away our shrouds, braces, and running gear, the mainrail, topgallant bulwarks, and split our mainsail.”

“No, we ain’t,” was the reply. “We know nothing of the job you’re talking about; so sheer off, will ye, and take care to spot the right party afore letting fly.”

Without answering, Mr. Whitear shifted his helm so as to bring his vessel to leeward of the barque; and then, running forward when the schooner had forged abreast of the other vessel, he shouted to the man who had answered his hail to look over the port bow of the barque and there he would see the marks of the schooner’s chain-plate bolts, whilst farther evidence of the barque being the culprit lay in particles of her planking adhering to the _Jehu’s_ chain-plates. This was too decisive to admit of farther denial; and Mr. John Whitear having obtained all the information he required, walked aft again, once more shifted his helm, saluted the barque with a farewell flourish of his fist, and then gave orders to his men to trim sail and head for the port to which they were bound.

_A SALVAGE JOB._

Among the most picturesque and lively incidents of the sea are those of the encountering of abandoned vessels, and the struggles of the people who board them to carry them into port. Were it not for the imperative injunctions of owners, and the various obligations imposed upon shipmasters by the terms of charter-parties, policies, and the like, there is no doubt that we should hear very much oftener than we now do of the preservation of derelicts and their cargoes. The mariner often stumbles upon some substantial prize in this way. A ship is sighted, low in the water, with nothing standing perhaps but the stump of her foremast. A spell at the pumps eases her, she is overhauled, and her hold seen to be full of valuable cargo. She is taken in tow, and after several days, or perhaps weeks, of manœuvring, she is carried into port and found to be worth some thousands of pounds, a goodly portion of which goes to the men who navigated her into a place of safety. There is a touch of romance in such findings that never fails to render them amusing and even exciting reading; and as stories they are often rich in a high kind of marine characteristics.

One of these yarns, I remember, impressed me greatly at the time. The master of a vessel, called the _Fides_, sighted a Dutch barque water-logged. On approaching her, only one man was to be seen on board. He proved to be the skipper, who said that his crew had refused to remain by the vessel, and had left him alone in her. He was brought aboard the _Fides_, but had not been there ten minutes when he begged to be sent to his water-logged barque again. His entreaties were so moving that the captain of the _Fides_ yielded, and he was once more put in possession of his wreck and left there. Next day a vessel, called the _Ballater_, took him off, and the wonder was that the poor fellow had ever managed to keep his life on the deck of the wave-swept hulk. Here, in the most obscure form in the world, is an exhibition of the sailor’s loyalty to his ship so great as to make a truly heroical figure of that Dutch captain. Narratives which recount the meeting with derelicts and their conveyance to port often reveal some of the best qualities of the sailor--I mean his indifference to peril, his capacity of determined labour, his triumph over forces whose antagonism would leave most landsmen helpless and hopeless. Such was the story of the _Caledonia_, a prize crew from which took charge of the brig _Emily_, and, after ten days of fierce battling with violent gales of wind in a vessel jury-rigged and half full of water, were eventually forced to abandon her. Such was the voyage of five men in the derelict barque _Thor_ of Tvedestrand, laden with scrap-iron and oil-casks; they had to rig a jury-rudder to get her to sail, and for nearly a fortnight struggled with heavy weather and baffling winds, eventually being shipwrecked near Youghal, and narrowly escaping with their lives only to witness the craft they had desperately laboured to save go to pieces among the rocks.

Not very long since a ship-rigged vessel of nine hundred tons was proceeding on her voyage to one of the West India Islands. The weather had been calm and thick through the night, with a long swell rolling up from the westwards, and the morning broke with a fiery sun, red as that luminary is at his setting, and a mountainous heave of the sea that in the wake of the orb rolled in billows of molten gold, giving a kind of dreadful splendour to the hazy morning, with its faint and tarnished sky and the sickly green of the swelling and foamless deep, and the stubborn belt of haze that hung like the greyish shadow of rain upon the horizon, save where the sun loomed like a blood-red shield as he floated heavily out of the deep. There were a hundred signs to betoken a gale at hand, and preparatory measures were accordingly taken aboard the ship. All the light canvas and the mainsail were furled, and single reefs tied in the topsails. Never was such rolling. The draught of air had no weight to steady the vessel; she fell into the hollow of the swell, and from side to side she swayed as each ponderous liquid fold caught and hove her over, the water bursting inboard in smoke through her scupper-holes, the shrouds creaking with the tension of the strain as though they would draw the chain-plates like pliant wire, and every beam, strong fastening, and bulkhead added their groaning notes to the general clamour of the labouring hull and the beating canvas. By nine o’clock the sun had vanished under an expanse of slate-coloured cloud that hung over the whole surface of the deep; but yet another hour elapsed before the gale burst, and then it came along in a voice of thunder and over a surface of milk-white waters. With the upper topsail halliards let go and hands by the lower topsail sheets, the ship leaned down to it until the foam was up to a man’s shoulders in the lee scuppers; but they managed to get her to pay off, and presently she was speeding like an arrow on the wings of the tempest, piling the foam as high as her figure-head, her main-topsail blown in rags out of the bolt-ropes, and sheets of spray fogging her decks like bursts of vapour from a boiler.

The next thing to do was to bring her to the wind before the sea rose; the crew went aloft to stow the topsails and frap what remained of the main-topsail upon the yard; and after a little there was the ship with nothing on her but a small storm trysail, bowing and shearing at the huge surges which the storm had lifted in cones and pyramids, and which were now pouring and breaking with a terrible roaring noise. All day and far into the night the storm blew without intermission, but it broke in the middle watch, and then fined down so rapidly that at eight o’clock in the morning the ship was pursuing her course under whole topsails and topgallant-sails, and curtsying over the long heave of the sea, whose green seemed to sparkle after the purification of the tempest, and whose beautiful arching coils were brilliant with the diamond-like flashing of the foam chipped out of the emerald acclivities by the keen teeth of the clear, fresh north-east wind.

Shortly after noon the watch on deck had come out of the forecastle after eating their dinner, when a small brig was made out right ahead, apparently standing athwart the ship’s hawse. On approaching her it was seen that she was drifting, and that though there might be people aboard, she was not under control. Aloft she was in a state of great confusion, her foreyards squared, and her after-yards braced as wildly as the leeches of the canvas would allow. The davit falls were overhauled to the water’s edge, and all the boats were gone. Here and there ends of her running rigging trailed overboard, and as she rolled heavily in the trough of the sea, the sound of her flapping canvas threw a wild and melancholy echo athwart the breeze. The master of the ship loudly hailed her, and all eyes were eagerly fastened upon the brig to observe if there were any indications of life in her. Possibly nothing so heightens the mournful and tragical suggestions of an abandoned vessel as the loud hail of a passing ship and the deathlike stillness following, unbroken save by the hollow beating of canvas, the drowning sob of swelling water, and the creak of straining timbers.

It was very evident that nothing alive was in the brig, and the master of the ship, after consulting with his mate, decided on sending a boat. Accordingly, the second mate and a couple of seamen went over the side, and, after some hard rowing and careful dodging of the seas, they gained the brig, and scrambled upon her deck. They found that she was damaged to an extent that could not be imagined by inspection of her from the ship. Her galley and cabin skylights were smashed in, bulwark stanchions were started, and, in addition to various other injuries, there were three feet of water in the hold. Whether she had drained this water into her from the deck or whether it was due to a leak could not at once be ascertained; it was certain at least that her hold was full of cargo, and that it was of a nature that would not enable her to float should the water gain upon her. These facts were reported by the second mate, who added that he could find no papers belonging to the vessel, and that she had been stripped of all her provisions.

“It seems a pity to leave her knocking about here,” shouted the captain. “It’ll be another man’s job if we don’t tackle it. Do you see your way to carry her to Fayal?” then distant about four hundred miles.

The second mate conversed with the two men who were with him, and, after a little while, called out, “Ay, we’ll risk it.”

On this the two seamen were ordered to come alongside, when some provisions, water, a sextant, chart, and other needful articles were lowered into the boat. With these they put off, receiving a loud encouraging cheer from the rest of the ship’s crew; and, reaching the brig’s side, hoisted out the provisions, and hooked on the boat and dragged her up to the davits. The ship stood by for awhile, watching the plucky fellows, and perhaps suspecting that they might repent their undertaking, for even with a dry bottom the brig might have been reckoned a big navigating job for three men. She rolled heavily and continuously, her canvas striking the masts with loud reports, and making the light spars buckle, and as she lifted her shining sides out of the bright green seas the water was seen to gush from her bulwarks in a manner to prove the wrenching they had undergone from the recent tempest. There was no show of misgiving or repentance, however, on the part of the men. Having hoisted their boat they turned to and trimmed the yards, clapping the jigger on to the topsail halliards, and giving everything a good spread. The little vessel took the wind, slightly heeled, and came round to her course for the Western Islands, and the last thing the ship, as she filled and stood on her voyage, saw of the brig was the second mate at the wheel, the two men toiling at the break-pump amidships, and the little vessel under fore and main topgallant sail heavily swinging over the long ocean swell, throwing the foam from her deep round bows, and looking but the merest toy amid the vast surface of undulating waters which leaned away into the furthest reaches of the sky.

A crew of three men leaves, with one at the wheel, only two to do the ship’s work. Four or five seamen would not have been too many to hand that brig’s main sail alone, and a gale of wind might therefore oblige the second mate and his two companions to put their helm up and run for it, and leave the canvas to blow away with a blessing upon it before they could bring the vessel to. Four hundred miles seem but a short voyage nowadays; but a head wind might enlarge the period of such a journey into weeks, in which case, unless these men met with help--which, though very likely, was by no means certain--they were bound to perish of starvation, as the quantity of provisions supplied to them by the ship could not, however economically used, outlast four or five days. It is just because a sailor would keenly understand all the heavy risks and difficulties comprised in such an adventure as these three men had engaged in, that the courage implied in this and many other attempts of the same kind to save property found at sea deserves a good place in the annals of naval heroism. A half-hour’s spell at the pumps satisfied them that by regular application the water might be kept under, though there could be no longer any doubt that the vessel was leaking either from a started butt or some puncture below the water-line. A tarpaulin was found and secured over the broken skylight, as a provision against dirty weather; the galley fire was lighted, and the decks cleared up, and there being an old reel-log near the wheel, along with a sand-glass, they managed among them to heave it--the second mate at the helm holding the glass--and discovered that the brig was making a little less than four knots. But the weather kept fine, and this supported the men’s courage, as did also their assurance one to another that they were bound to be well rewarded for the risks they were running. They had another spell at the pump, and then fetched a bit of the ship’s beef that had been put to cook in the galley-copper, and bringing it aft with some biscuit, made out a tolerable meal, the mate steering with one hand and eating with the other.

The day passed quietly, but the wind was light, and the progress made was small. The duty of keeping the pump going at regular intervals grew exhausting, but it was absolutely necessary that the quantity of water should be kept under the depth found in the brig when she was boarded, and every hour throughout the day the harsh clank of the pump might be heard, ceasing after an interval when the men, pale with fatigue, and with the sweat streaming from their faces, flung themselves upon the deck breathless and spent. The breeze freshened at sunset, and the topgallant-sails were taken in. The night came down very dark, with a few misty stars here and there, and a flavour in the swing of the wind as it blew in gusts over the bulwarks that was a promise of bad weather. The weight of the water in the little vessel, coupled with the cargo, that came flush with the main hatch, sunk her deep, and as the sea rose her behaviour grew wild. The billows tumbled against her weather-bow, and such was her inelasticity that at times she would not rise to them, but let them roll over her forecastle, burying herself pretty nearly as far aft as her foremast, and flooding her decks to the wheel. Fortunately her upper works were staunch, or she must have been drowned again and again by the seas which tumbled in tons’ weight over her head. The men made shift to stow the upper topsails before it came on hard, but they could do nothing with the lower canvas, which must blow away if it would not stand. This the fore-topsail did shortly after ten o’clock in a squall of wind; the weather sheet parted, and in a few moments the sail was in rags, increasing the roaring noise of the gale and the crashing sound of the sea by the fierce whipping of the tattered cloths. Amidst all this confusion and wild scene of the black heavens and glimmering heights of water, the men betook themselves again and again to the pumps, and the metallic ring of the working brake flung a dismal note of shipwreck into the harsh uproar of the warring elements. It is difficult to realize a sterner picture of struggle, a more furious array of perils. Here were three men as crew of a vessel which wanted a good nine hands to work her, exhausted by pumping, and yet obliged regularly to apply themselves to the pump to keep the vessel afloat--forced by this work, or by having to tend the helm, to remain unsheltered upon the decks over which the seas were bursting in whole oceans; wet through to the skin, without the means of obtaining a warm drink, and without the chance of preserving a dry stitch even were an opportunity afforded them to change their clothes; a black and howling void overhead, and below a huge broken sea, in whose thunderous hollows the little vessel laboured like a drowning thing, one moment upright and becalmed by the towering coil of a rushing surge, the next on her beam-ends on the summit of the liquid height, with the full force of the gale howling through her rigging, and the spray from the breaking heads of the near combers sweeping over her decks upon the breath of the black and ringing wind like a furious snow-storm.

In the limits assigned here it is impossible to do justice to this struggle. To make it a conceivable thing to the landsman’s intelligence something of photographic minuteness is wanted in the reproduction; the picture of the men leaving the pumps and crawling along the deck to the wheel, their talk, their postures as they sat crouching and listening to the infernal din in the ebony void on high--a hundred such matters, indeed--together with the outline of the vessel, revealed for a breathless space, as she swooped into a trough with a headlong shearing of the bows that made the water boil in whiteness which flung a kind of twilight round about, in which the ink-like configuration of the straining and beaten fabric was thrown up as though a gleam of pallid moonshine had broken through the dense vapours of the storm and fallen for an instant into the swirling and creaming hollow in which the brig lay weltering. That the deeply-laden and half-drowned vessel should have outlived that night was a real miracle. Fierce as had been the preceding storm encountered by the ship, this gale had at times an edge in it that the other wanted. Happily, like its predecessor, it was short-lived, and blew itself out soon after daybreak, though it left such a tremendous sea behind that for several hours after the wind had sobered down into a topgallant breeze the brig was in the utmost jeopardy. The rolling was so frightful that the men could do nothing aloft. The mate refused to allow them to leave the deck, expecting every instant to see the mast go over the side. It was almost impossible to stand at the pumps; sometimes the little vessel would literally _dish_ a sea over her rail that swept the two seamen off their legs, and forced the mate, who grasped the wheel, to hold on to the spokes for dear life; and it was as much as their necks were worth to let go for a moment. By noon, however, the swell had greatly subsided, and the men made shift to set the main and upper fore-topsails and topgallant-sails, and to board the foretack. The mate also got an observation which enabled him to set his course. But the night that was passed had almost done for them; they could scarcely stand, and crawled about like sick men; and such was their pass that when the mate, laying hold of the pump, sung out to one of his companions to come and lend him a hand, the reply was that if the pumping was to depend upon _him_, the blooming hooker might as well sink at once, as there was not strength enough left in him to kill a flea; and it was not until the mate and the other man who stood at the wheel had consumed twenty minutes in entreaties, curses, and other marine rhetoric, that the exhausted creature was induced to “tail on.” Fortunately for the poor fellows the wind had shifted into a quarter favourable for their voyage; they dried their clothes, cooked some beef, and managed to snatch sufficient rest between the intervals of pumping to give them back something of their strength. Everything went on well until they were about forty miles distant from Fayal, when the wind backed and blew a fresh breeze right ahead. This was maddening enough. They braced the yards hard up, packed all that they could hoist upon the vessel, and swore that, come what might, they would not slacken a halliard nor touch a sheet though it should blow fit to prize the old butter-box out of the water. It was not long after this that a steamer hove in sight, and, probably suspecting a case of distress by the look of the brig aloft--for the rags of the lower fore-topsail still fluttered upon the yard--slowed her engines to speak the little vessel. “What ship is that?” was asked. The name was given and the circumstances related. The steamer then offered to give the brig a drag towards Fayal, but when it was understood that a share in the salvage would be expected, the second mate sung out no, they wanted no help, they had scraped through it all right so far, and were willing to venture the remaining risks. Thereupon the steamer proceeded, but had not sunk her hull when the wind again shifted, and enabled the brig to look up for her port with the breeze full abeam; and within nine hours from the time of having been spoken by the steamer, a pilot had boarded her, and she was safely moored at the west end of Fayal Bay. The value of the brig and cargo proved to be sixteen hundred pounds, and when the award came to be made, four hundred pounds were given to the owners of the ship that had boarded the brig, one hundred pounds to the master and crew of the ship, and a substantial sum to the second mate and his two men.

_A CHANNEL INCIDENT._

The captains of the steamers which ply as passenger and cargo vessels between London and the French ports are a class of men familiar in a more or less degree to most of us, and it is probably this familiarity that prevents us from dwelling, with the emphasis that is deserved, upon the singular skill they exhibit, day after day, and year after year, in carrying their ships through what may be fairly called the most dangerous waters in the world, with scarcely a misadventure to vary the chronicles of their little voyages. By night and by day they are threading the intricacies of the crowded river Thames, groping through white mists so thick that a buoy must be alongside before it can be seen; struggling against sudden bursts of furious Channel weather, which bring up the most abominable kind of sea that a sailor can tumble about in--short, roaring cross surges which seem to knock the very breath out of the paddle steamer, sloping her funnel like the _bâton_ in the hand of a band conductor, submerging one paddle-wheel to let the other revolve like a windmill out of water, and blowing up in storms of snow from the sponsons, whilst the worried vessel pitches savagely into the narrow hollows, flinging up her stern like the hind legs of a colt that takes fright at a passing train, her tarpaulins streaming with wet, the escape-pipe blowing as she reels, a few sea-sick passengers wet through aft, two or three seamen in oilskins dodging the seas forward, and the skipper on the bridge holding on to the rail with both hands, and wondering what that confounded old “Geordie” right ahead is up to, coming along with square yards and his patched boom-foresail bellying out like a sailor’s shirt drying in the forestay, as if the whole of the Channel were his private property, and it was his duty to run over anything that got in his road.

Take the trip to Boulogne alone. In fine, clear weather it is all plain sailing, no doubt. But if a passenger wants to appraise the merits of these captains rightly, let him quit the pitch-dark deck, and a night so black and thick that it is a positive relief to the eye when a shower of sparks breaks out of the funnel and blows away into the ebony gloom to leeward, and go below into the bright, warm cabin, and overhaul a chart of the mouth of the Thames and the adjacent waters as far as the South Sands Head Light. Why, the sight is bewildered by the mere look of that chart. It is as though a spider had got foul of an ink bottle, and had been cleaning its legs on a large sheet of white paper. West and East Girdlers, Margate Sands, Long Sands, Sunk Sands, Goodwin Sands--it seems to be all sand; whilst the soundings are more alarming still--eleven fathoms here, and close against it, one fathom--the English of which is blue lights, rockets, hovellers, lifeboats, and Board-of-Trade inquiries. Jones, asleep in his little state cabin, knows nothing of the maze of perils through which he is being steered; he will rise in the morning and take his seat at the breakfast-table, and in the composed features of the brown-faced, hearty-looking captain who sits modestly eating a rasher of bacon, he will find no trace or hint of a vigil which began at London Bridge and which will not terminate until Boulogne is reached, though perhaps--the Goodwins being astern, and neither the Varne nor the Ridge being very much in the road--the hardest part of it may be said to be over.

But the dangers of the English Channel are by no means limited to shoals and foul weather. If those were all, the captains who safely carry hundreds upon hundreds of passengers to and fro in the course of the year, would have to abate something of the praise to which their excellent skill and remarkable vigilance entitle them. In truth, a danger more to be feared than shallow water and tempestuous weather is collision. I am not speaking of the daytime and fine weather; though even in the daytime and in fine weather collisions at sea will happen through a dozen circumstances more absolutely unavoidable than the most apparently unavoidable railway collision ever attributed by a coroner’s jury to pure accident. It is the thick and silent night that is most haunted by this deadly peril. There is no wind, but a drenching drizzle drops unseen, save in the haze of the cabin skylight, from a black heaven that seems to rest its ponderous burden on the slender mastheads of the creeping steamer. It is the English Channel, the great maritime highway that leads to all parts of the world, and now as ever it is crowded with shipping; and through this mighty shadow, full of hidden life and hidden danger, those captains I am writing of must bring their vessels, day after day, week after week. They must not lag, for time is precious to their owners. Their unscathed emergence year after year must surely savour of the miraculous to any man who will but give his mind to the character of the dangers through which these sailors steer their vessels in safety. As a sample of this particular peril of collision, let me give an instance--a recent one. It may remove reference from all risk of misapprehension if I say at once that the steamer was from Bilbao, bound to a North country port.

She was abreast of Beachy Head when the night fell, and the fresh southerly wind, suddenly shifting to the westward in a little squall, dropped. During the latter portion of the afternoon the weather had been slowly thickening, but when the wind went the haze rolled up all round like smoke, blackening the moonless night until the very foam breaking away from under the counter was a scarcely perceptible glimmer upon the inky surface that melted into the midnight void within a biscuit’s throw from the vessel’s side. There were a few passengers, who vanished with the daylight and might be seen, by peering through the cloudy skylight glass, seated at the cabin table, the lamplight bright upon them, and making the picture of the irradiated interior, by contrast with the breathless blackness on deck, like a magic-lantern show. There was no gleam of phosphorus, no pallid streak of foam, to define the presence of the deep; but the soft seething of the passing froth, resembling the escape of steam heard thinly and at a long distance, filled the ear with a permanent note, and the dull vibration of the engines could be lightly felt. The haze was as wetting as rain; and the bullseyes over the lighted interior glimmered like emeralds in the decks upon which the mist was crawling as the vessel carried it along. There is a mystery in the hushed blackness of a night like this at sea which may be enjoyed in the open ocean, where the imagination lets itself loose upon the hidden leagues of waters, and finds a kind of life in death in the mere capacity of sentience amidst such a universe of shadow; but it comes with an element of fear in a narrow sea studded with quicksands and alive with vessels. The eye struggles with the darkness in vain. Every instinct sympathizes with the blindness that has fallen upon you; but the strained ear catches no more than the sob and fret of passing water and the chafing of gear as the vessel sways upon the indistinguishable folds of the swell. A man coming up out of the cabin of that steamer might have reckoned the vessel deserted and left to her own guidance. The wheel was amidships, and there was no familiar binnacle-lamp to relieve with its soft mist of light the eye that strove to pierce the darkness aft. To know where the captain was, or whether there were any hands on the look-out, it would have been necessary to sing out or go about the decks and upon the bridge groping.

Presently, what looked to be a composant--a small trembling point of light--hovered in the blackness on the starboard bow, and a moment after there crept out under it a dull green smudge, as faint and baffling in the thickness as the wavering flame of spirits of wine. A steamer’s lights; but all that was visible of her was a deeper darkness in the air where she loomed, a row of illuminated scuttles like the beach-lamps of a little town seen afar, and fibres of radiance striking into the foggy air from the bright light on the fore-mast. A deeper fold of darkness seemed to overlap the night as the invisible steamship swept by; the pulsing of her engines thinned down, and the wash of the bow-wave melted into the vague, haunting undertone of chafing water--a sound coming you know not from where. On a sudden the decks rang with a loud and fearful cry, “There’s a vessel right ahead! Hard-a-port! Hard-a-port! mind, or we shall be into her!” Crash! You could hear the sound of splintering wood, followed by a whole chorus of shrieks, whilst a dozen orders were volleyed out in hoarse notes on the steamer’s decks. “What is it?” “Where is she?” “Get some lights along, in God’s name!” A bright red flame threw out a wild radiance over the steamer’s side: there was a rush of men to see what it was, and there, gliding past the steamer, every outline distorted by the crimson, flickering, streaming fires of a flare-tin held on high by one of her men, was a French three-masted smack, her decks apparently full of people, shrieking altogether, and in every conceivable posture of entreaty and terror--a dreadful picture indeed, standing out with terrible distinctness in the red light of the flare against the liquid pitch of the sea and the sky. Their shouts and cries were in the rudest _patois_; it was impossible to distinguish their meaning amidst the hubbub on the maimed and broken hull, as it veered swiftly astern, the mainmast over the side, the wild light flashing up the crowd of white faces as the flame from the tin broke out in a blood-red fork of radiance, and the whole fearful picture vanishing as the light suddenly expired, and the night rolled its inky tide over it. The steamer’s engines were instantly reversed and the iron fabric stopped. The passengers came rushing up out of the cabin, increasing the distraction of the darkness by their eager, terrified inquiries to know what had happened. The chorus of shrieks astern was silenced, and only faint, single, most melancholy shouts broke the terrible silence upon the sea, proving but too conclusively that the vessel had foundered, and that these cries came from swimmers.

Meanwhile every lamp and lantern aboard the steamer that could be collected had been brought on deck, and you could see the dark figures of seamen struggling to get the boats overboard, rushing aft, and vociferating promises of speedy help into the blackness astern, some bending on lanterns to ropes’ ends, and letting them drop over the side, and flinging ends of line overboard for the clutch of such swimmers as should reach the steamer; whilst the cries of the captain and mates and the shouts of the crew were made deafening by the pouring and hissing of steam up in the blackness overhead. It always seems an eternity at times like this before the boats are overboard; something gets foul; the oars have been taken forward to be scraped, and cannot be found; a kink in the fall has jammed in the davit-block; there is no plug, and a dozen voices are shouting all at once for something to take its place. But two boats at last were launched, after an interval of about five minutes, and pulled slowly away for the spot where the smack had foundered, a hand in each bow holding a lantern and keeping a bright look-out for those black spots which should denote the heads of swimmers and drowning men. A silence as of death fell upon the steamship as her boats left her. A crowd of people stood in the stern watching the two spots of light upon the water, breathlessly listening for any sound that should indicate the rescue of even one man. The lanterns over the side flung a short space of radiance upon the sea, and men were posted along the rail to watch for any approaching swimmer who should have been missed by the boats.

“Are you finding any of them?” bawled the captain of the steamer, sending his voice in a roar through the hollow of his hands.

“Ay, ay, we’re picking them up,” came back the answer in the merest thread of sound.

Ten minutes went by, and then suddenly there arose a shout from one of the men stationed at the port bulwarks.

“Here’s a man swimming here!” and in a breath there was a rush to the side.

“Get another light over!”

“Fling him this life-buoy!”

“Pitch a coil of rope to him, but mind you don’t hit his head, or you’ll sink him!”

Half a dozen splashes told that these various orders had been executed. “He’s got hold of my line!” sang out a voice, and as the rope was gently hauled in, a seaman, jumping into the bight of a rope, sprang overboard, and in a few moments both men were dragged over the side.

The half-drowned French smacksman fell down in a heap the instant he touched the deck. He was dressed in heavy sea-boots and oilskin leggings, and how he had managed to swim the distance from where his vessel had foundered to the steamer was a miracle not to be explained by any known law of specific gravity. He was carried into the forecastle, unable to articulate; but another quarter of an hour went by before the boats returned.

“How many have you?” shouted the captain, as they approached.

“We have four, and the other boat has five. There are women among ’em,” was the answer.

They came alongside, and one by one the poor creatures were handed up. There were three women, dressed in the picturesque costume of the Boulogne fishwife, but draggled, streaming, with closed eyes, and a quick, suffocating breathing, half dead. Most of the others were in the last stage of exhaustion; but one was able to speak, and as he stood a moment in the lantern-light answering the captain’s questions, a more moving object could not be imagined. The water drained from his fingers, his hat was gone, and his iron-grey hair--for he was an old man--lay in a tangled mass over his eyes; and there was a most heartrending expression of horror and despair in his face.

He said his vessel had left Boulogne early that morning. There were four women and ten men and boys on board. He owned that they had had no lights burning. He trembled like a freezing man, and was then led below, with his hands to his face, sobbing as if his heart would break, and moaning in his rude French that amongst the drowned were his wife and boy.

“Are you sure there were no others afloat when you came away?” asked the captain of the mate, who had charge of the boats. “One man swam to us, I must tell you, and we have him aboard.”

“Sure, sir,” was the answer. “We pulled round and round, but there was nothing to be seen. The people were saved by the mainmast that was left afloat when the smack went down. Those who were drowned missed it, otherwise it was big enough to keep all of them up.”

For another twenty minutes the captain lingered, peering into the darkness, and keeping one boat overboard ready for the first sound. But the deep was as silent as the tomb, and nothing disturbed the deathlike stillness, unless it were the murmur of the men forward talking over the tragical incident, and the quick, passionate whispers of the passengers, as one would suddenly say, “Hush! what was that?” and another, “See! is not that something moving out yonder?” Nothing more could be done. Very reluctantly the captain quitted the stern of his vessel and gave orders to get the boat on board, and in a little while the steamer was slowly moving again through the blackness, her decks wrapped in darkness and silence, whilst the haze floated like steam round the masthead light, and the water gurgled like the cry of a drowning man as it eddied round under the counter and went away in a pale glimmer of froth into the midnight gloom astern.

This little incident will, I believe, fairly set before the reader one of the perils against which those particular captains to whom I referred in the beginning of this article have to contend. Here is a fishing-smack, lying becalmed, without a light showing, on a night made pitch dark by a drizzling haze. How could such a collision be averted, short of the captain of the steamer bringing up?--a remedy which his owners most assuredly would not think the better of him for adopting. I repeat that having regard to the difficult navigation of the mouth of the Thames, as far south as the southern limb of the Goodwins, to the mass of shipping of all kinds that is always crowding these waters, to the perilous weather to be found there, and to the negligence, foolhardiness, and indifference which are characteristic of the seamanship of scores of the men--English as well as foreigners--who have charge of small craft navigating that sea, the manner in which the masters I am speaking of carry their steamers from port to port, year after year, showing always the same clean bill of health, implies an amount of skill and vigilance which any one acquainted with the navigation and dangers of the English Channel from the Nore to the Bullock Bank will own cannot be too highly praised.

_LOSS OF A SMACK’S CREW._