Читать книгу The Mutiny of the Flying Spray - Arthur Hunt Chute - Страница 11
Оглавление“FLYING SPRAY, AHOY!”
Salt pork and hard-tack washed down with hot coffee did much to give me an at-peace-with-the-world feeling, and I came out on deck after my repast feeling more at ease.
“All right, Tug, I’ll relieve you, and you can go below for your whack of grub.”
“Righto.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Nearly famished, old man.”
Taking my place at the tiller, I told myself that I had probably been too apprehensive before dinner, because of the need of food.
But in spite of new assurances, the everlasting pounding of the bows was still there, sounding a devil’s tattoo with ominous regularity.
When Tug came back on deck again, even he was forced to exclaim, “Ye gods, what an infernal row she’s kicking up!”
I had been studying her actions, and an idea was coming to me of how to humor her.
“With such a strong wind, I guess the trouble is we’re giving her too much canvas.”
“You’ve got a head like a carpet tack, Laurie. What’s up we didn’t think of that before?”
Lashing the wheel hard down, the two of us went to it, taking a reef in mainsail and foresail. With this task accomplished, the vicious pounding abated temporarily, but she was deep in the water, and before long she was making just as bad weather as ever.
Seeing a bigger sea coming, Tug, who had resumed the steering, tried to force her head to meet it, but she was too slow in stays. Something was holding her down by the head, there was no buoyancy.
“Come on, up to it, old girl!” Tug shouted, coaxingly.
She tried to fetch it, but was too logy.
“Look out!” I shouted, leaping for the rigging.
Tumbling over the forequarter came the big fellow, shouldering his way aft, burying everything, Tug Wilson included.
Hanging onto the tiller for dear life, Tug passed out of sight in a seething maelstrom of white and green. Then, as the sea passed on, the stern came heavily out of it.
Shaking himself, like a great Newfoundland dog, Tug wiped the brine from his eyes, squinted at the binnacle box, and rolled the pinkie onto her course again.
Swinging myself back onto the deck, I could not withstand the contagious merriment with which my chum met the situation.
“What ’ye think this is, Tug, the Boston swimming pool?”
Still laughing, I went below to get my oilskins. There was something so ridiculously funny in the way Tug took his last bath, that we both kept on laughing, in spite of the dismalness of the situation.
Out at the tiller, I heard the note of a song, and was thankful for such an irrepressible companion.
“That’s right, Bo, spit on your hands,” I shouted.
“Can’t keep a squirrel on the ground,” came back the answer, as my chum resumed his jaunty and light-hearted singing.
I was just starting back on deck, with my oilskins, when the sight of water seeping up through the cuddy took all the singing clean out of me.
Grabbing a bucket, I began to bail.
“Cuddy’s half full of water,” I called out.
“Came aboard with last sea; ye can soon fix that. Better keep slide fast after this.”
I was bailing calmly enough, at first, but gradually my speed increased, while a panicky feeling began to clutch at my throat. There seemed to be no such thing as gaining a mastery of the situation.
Thoroughly alarmed at the implication of that gaining water, I set to it with might and main, but the harder I bailed, the higher the water of the cuddy seemed to be creeping.
Down there in that uncertain light, the lapping blackness looked ominous as the face of death. My breath came in quick, short gasps. What was mere man pitted against such overwhelming odds!
With a sudden sense of my own ineffectiveness, I called out to my companion, and in a twinkling, Tug came jumping down beside me.
I did not have to tell him the trouble, it was written plainly.
“She’s going to founder!”
For once, Tug’s voice sounded with the slightest quaver.
For myself, I had already thrown the sponge. Out of that mad orgy of futile bailing, I had emerged utterly whipped.
“What’s the use?” I wailed. “The jig’s up.”
We were now too far offshore and in too sodden a condition to even think of putting back.
I had the feeling of one who had been trapped and miserably cheated. There was a sickening regret that I had not acted upon my own best judgment, a couple of hours before. Here we were like cornered rats. Everything seemed so sickeningly futile.
As in a lightning flash, I saw my mother at home, waiting for my return, with ever increasing apprehension. I could have cried at the anguish of that picture, but in the next instant there was a fit of madness that I should have been done in so foolishly.
With that fit of madness, a cold, calculating spirit seemed to come upon me, or perhaps it was the heartening example of Tug Wilson, as good as a whole team, that wrought the change. At all events, my reasoning power returned, and I ceased to be a rat in a corner.
“Hey, Tug, a little less energy, and a little more brains is what we’re needing.”
“What d’ye mean?”
“Man the pump, of course.”
The pump was a crazy affair, but far ahead of the bucket, and soon we had the water pouring out in cascades. It came out at first black and slimy, which was quite all right. Then, later, it came white and clean, which was altogether wrong, indeed it couldn’t have been worse.
At the sight of that clean brine pouring out of the scuppers, I knew beyond a peradventure that we were doomed. Beating in toward the shore, in our present condition, was out of the question. Hammering into those head seas would have sent us to the bottom in brief order.
“Nothing for it, Tug, but to let her run, and hope to get picked off before dark. It we don’t meet somebody out here, our name’s Dennis.”
“While there’s life there’s hope,” panted Tug.
“Mighty slim chance,” I muttered to myself, as I took the tiller, and headed her off before the gale.
To our little craft, the following seas seemed mountain high.
To Tug, at the pump, I shouted encouragingly:
“Don’t let her get down by the stern, old man. If we can only keep from getting pooped!”
All through the afternoon we spelled each other, but in spite of our best efforts, it was apparent that the water was slowly but surely seeping up. Even the Herculean strength of my chum was nothing against that giant.
As the afternoon wore on, wind and sea were both alike going down. But as the weather moderated, the water in our hold was still gaining.
Toward twilight, the gale had blown itself out entirely, and we rolled in an uneasy calm, with the pinkie awash to her scuppers.
Almost dazed from exhaustion, I stood my successive turns at the pump. I had already far exceeded my physical power, everything now was done on nerve.
It seemed as if through all eternity I had been manning that everlasting pump brake, fighting that everlasting sea.
As my strength grew weaker, a tiredness of soul and body began to act like an anodyne. The world seemed to be fading away. But I never gave up hope, for something within was continually saying:
“It’s not the end! It’s not the end!”
All through the afternoon, we had been scanning the horizon in vain hope of a sail. Visibility was low, and we could discern nothing. Throughout it all, Tug kept repeating, reassuringly:
“We’re sure to meet some one. We’re right in the track of the outward-bounders.”
As night came on, I began to think that the sunset was the last that I should ever see. The thought of life’s pitiful incompleteness was again seizing me with a poignant feeling, when unexpectedly, Tug shouted:
“Look! Look!”
With senses unnaturally keen, I turned, and beheld against the sunset sky a cloud-piled heeling clipper, racing grandly down upon us.
“Hurrah! It’s an outward-bounder,” shouted Tug, in sudden ecstasy.
But I did not trust myself to speak. I felt that there was not yet a certainty of life, only a slender hope.
Waving my coat as a signal, I prayed that their lookout would not miss us.
Whatever uncertainty there was vanished as she came on, looming up incredibly with royals and skysails. Never before had I seen such beauty as that soaring clipper against the sunset. I could have cried at the sight of her for with her came the gift of life.
As she drew nearer, there was something strangely reminiscent in her fine-sweeping lines, as light as the swoop of a swallow. Where had I seen her before? Where had I admired those selfsame lines? Then, in a twinkling, it flashed upon me. Cupping hands to mouth, I shouted:
“Flying Spray, ahoy!”
Just as the oncoming clipper bows seemed to threaten, we saw the mainyard backed, and almost instantaneously there sounded a whir of block sheaves, and a splash as her quarterboat took the water.
Came the steady clack, clack, clack of oars on rowlocks, our song of rescue, and two minutes later, we were taken off the doomed pinkie, leaving her wallowing impotently in the backwash.
Another two minutes, and we had been whipped up from the mizzen yard, onto the clipper’s quarter.
After tuning one’s mind to death, life came back with an inexpressible shock. Could it be that we were to see our homes again? The tears were coming unbidden, when I heard the voice of Captain Peabody.
“Where in the world were you lads going?”
“Bound for California, Sir,” answered Tug.
“What, in that cockleshell!” As we stood looking over the rail, we saw the so-called cockleshell grating against the side of the clipper, and then, like a thing of paper, it broke in two, and submerged.
Even the immutable face of the skipper betrayed emotion.
“You were off for California in that?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Well, I must say I admire your spunk better than I do your sense. Now, since you’ve risked so much, you’ll have to see it through. There’s no such thing as turning back. We’ll enter you as apprentices, and if you’ve got the stuff in you, we’ll be making officers out of you.”
I was about to thank him, when he cut me short.
“That will do. And now, Mr. Duggan, will you show these lads the spare bunks in the midship house? And see that they are roused out for the muster, along with the rest.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” answered Duggan, about the hardest looking thug that one could imagine outside the walls of a penitentiary. I felt antipathy to him at sight.
“Come on, youse,” he growled, and started to lead us forward.
They were already tailing onto the braces. With a rattle of blocks the mainyard swung to the wind, and the Flying Spray was under weigh once more.
On entering our quarters in the midship house, I stumbled awkwardly across the sill, at which Duggan’s heavy boot was vigorously applied, astern.
“Git in there, ye suckin’ admiral. And don’t waste no time when I calls the muster, or ye’ll git a hunk o’ holystone at the heels instead of a coffin.”
